Welcome to Our Basic Art Course Homeschool Curriculum: All About Art 

Course Sample for All About Art, a Basic Art Course for Homeschoolers

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Week 2: Still Life

Vocabulary:

Medium
Mosaics
Cubism
Negative space

A still life is a group of objects an artist looks at to draw or paint. The objects are usually groups of fruit, flowers, or animals that are still. Artists would paint anything that was once alive, which is why it was called still life. A still life can be done in any medium (what the artist uses to make the picture) but were most commonly done as paintings.

People have been making still lifes (note the spelling of the plural of “life” is different in this context from the usual spelling) for thousands of years, as far back as Ancient Egypt. Egyptians were not concerned with making things look realistic but with being able to tell what the objects were.

Romans and Greeks made still lifes that were somewhat more realistic. They are best known for their still life mosaics (tiny pieces of marble laid out in such a way that when looked at far away create a picture). If you look closely at the picture below, you can tell that it is made from a lot of small pieces of glass or marble.

As time went by, artists were able to make paintings that were more and more realistic. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the goal of paintings was to make them look as real as possible. The camera had not yet been invented, so this was the best way to record what life was like.