StoryBook Art

We are using the book StoryBook Art by MaryAnn F. Kohl as our art study, and I LOVE how much more accessible for my kids the art of picture book illustrators is than say, the work of Da Vinci. Each lesson is based around a picture book, and then there is an art activity that uses a similar technique or imitates the style of the illustrations.

We started with Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry, which StoryBook Art tells us the author painted using "gouache". We were just using tempera paint, but the kids were delighted to notice that actually some of our Crayola-brand paints said "gouache" on the labels. So we had "the real stuff!".

A bit of planned activity is very helpful in getting past the post-Christmas cranky days, I'm finding.