Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Minoan Fresco Project

Last week we read together in several books about the Minoans of Ancient Crete. The kids tried their hand at painting frescoes in the style of the Minoans.

On Friday, I did a Google image search to find examples of Minoan frescoes. I copied and pasted some images into Word documents, enlarging all of them. Incidentally, during my search, I came across a fresco done by a fellow homeschooler (scroll down a little)!

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The kids picked their favorite fresco example and practiced painting a similar picture with watercolors. Sophie decided to paint from her own imagination rather than basing it on an actual Minoan painting.
They painted the same scene more than once to get the hang of painting quickly so that they could later paint on wet plaster before it dried completely.

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Evan helped Logan paint too!

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On Saturday, we took a 3 lb. container of Plaster of Paris and ended up using the whole thing, mixing it out on the back porch to avoid the dust inside the house.

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That amount of plaster filled up three shoebox lids (supplied by a grandma who keeps everything.) We oiled the lids first, then poured in the plaster.

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When the surface of the plaster began to lose its shine, the kids began painting.

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Matthew and Sophie used watercolors.

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Evan used tempera paint.

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Birds and Lilies Fresco by Evan

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Blue Bird Fresco by Matthew

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Pink Bird Fresco by Sophie

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

WONDERFUL fresco projects! What fun. You have some talented artists too.

Love your use of the glass table on the post below too.

All this art reminds me, I'd meant to email and thank you for the heads up on the Rembrandt! Oh, how we would have LOVED to have gone to the exhibit! It didn't work for us to leave town this time, but I really was delighted you thought to pass the info along, because on the right weekend we could have made a day of it.(Or a few days with a stop at the grandparents')

my5wolfcubs said...

Those turned out great!! Your photographs are very clear too, much nicer than mine! And thanks for linking to my dd's fresco -- she really enjoys doing projects!
Lee

Lisa~ said...

How cool is that? We have never done anything like that.... I bet my girls would love it...

You have fine arteests... *Ü*

Lisa

PS. Its almost Wednesday....

Anonymous said...

I love the frescoes! We did this about 2 weeks ago, though just on paper. I wasn't up to doing plaster.

I also love the maps below. I know people who plaster their table with maps, then put a clear plastic tablecloth over the top of them so they can do geography at mealtimes.

*** said...

This looks really neat! Did you have any trouble getting the plaster out...did the cardboard stick?

Meliss said...

We oiled the cardboard well. A little bit of cardboard stuck to the back of the plaster pieces, but not badly, and I didn't mind, because it was not visible.

Alane @RaH said...

Those are beautiful! We did this when my ds was in 1st grade. He painted a traditional race car from the minoan period lol! I love the shoebox lid idea....will have to remember that for our next round in ancient history!