Friday, May 13, 2011

Picture Study- A Charlotte Mason Approach

Winslow Homer - Waiting for Dad

While there are many things in our homeschool day that I orient around a classical education, I truly appreciate a large part of the Charlotte Mason (CM) philosophy and practices in home academics. Some time back I decided to purchase the Dover Publications Art Cards to put to use in a CM picture study manner. I have been meaning to post about these cards and how I prepared them for some time, and when I read the two most recent posts from Simply Charlotte Mason, I was encouraged to share. (If you are not familiar with picture study, please, please take the time to learn how simple and meaningful this is. Go here and here to start.)
When I ordered my art cards from Dover I loved the way they had information about each card in the books. I knew I wanted to make an "art library" using the cards, but I wasn't willing to give up the overviews of the artists while discarding the cover and leftovers of the book. So, I decided to cut out and save the parts that I could use.

My intentions were to create photo albums with the cards. I pasted the overview information to an insert for the back cover of my album and added specific information to the reverse side of the images. Then I combined all the cards and the information in 4X6" photo albums. Now I have an easy reference for finding images by artist or artistic style. While these small prints don't show the detail of a larger image, I am glad to have them available and for a reasonable price.

Now let's do some picture study!Frank Benson - Sunlight