Painting Like A Wild Animal

Or, at least, in the "fauve" style, which means wild animals in French. Using unnatural colours in natural portraits to express meaning. Apparently. Good excuse for a real colour fest in other words. And a prelude to the abstract art movement, so it says here. Something Matisse dabbled in, which is why we were dabbling in it today. "When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky." - Matisse.

This afternoon, Emily continued working on her artists project, writing some interesting facts about Matisse and creating a fauve style cat painting:


inspired particularly by Matisse's "Woman With A Hat" seen here for the benefit of those who haven't a clue what I'm on about (because I didn't have before about a week ago, so I'm guessing I might just not be the only one!)


All good stuff. She put a great deal of thought into this one, and spent ages on it. Again, I'm enthused by how much Emily seems to be enjoying this famous artist malarky. She's already making intelligent comments about styles and similarities when we look through various art books. I guess it combines her love of history with her love of arty things - what more could a girl want? Picasso's next on the list.

This morning Emily did more handwriting practice, wrote a piece about "a favourite memory" (the day we went to fetch the kittens, so not too taxing on the long term memory banks, lol), did two pages of quite complicated maths (without a fuss!) and a couple of pages in a science workbook. This latter was asking her to name the seven processes that show something is alive. Umm. She thought of five - that it moves, reproduces, reacts to stimulus, grows and "eats". Considering I couldn't off hand think of the other two either (although I guess one might have to do with processing oxygen) there was much puzzlement over that, lol.

A busy, productive day. Oh yes, and for the last hour and a half, Emily's been humming away to herself in her bedroom making a "feely sunset" picture for the benefit of anyone who can't see very well, entirely of her own suggestion. Ticks design and technology. Again.

And the big cats are tolerating the kitty bits slightly better too. A Good Thing. Although that may have to do with the fact that it's been raining all day and neither of them are fans of wet paws. Hmmm, imagine the dilemma they must have faced....stay out here in the rain or go IN THERE where the small fluffy things are.....