A humid summer haze covers the River Seine and the grassy bank where young men and boys go swimming on Sunday. Everything seems so quiet, still, and very hot. They wear hats to protect them from the hot sun. The artist Georges Seurat used warm tones to give viewers the feeling of the hot sun. Seurat was trying to catch the dazzle of hot sunlight…

Artists often paint the different seasonal activities people engage in and the way the world looks as changes take place. The weather for each of the four seasons is different. Farmers plant crops and gardens in the spring and harvest their crops in the fall, just like "The Harvesters" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. To begin, children will observe…

Students have completed their two-dimensional drawings, paintings, prints or collages, and there they are--in a neat stack on a shelf. They deserve to be shown to the students, fellow teachers, visiting parents and administrators. They need to be matted or mounted, and placed on exhibit in a corridor, hallway or special bulletin board. By matting…

This article features the painting "View of Toledo," based on Toledo, a very old city located on a high plateau in Spain. By the time the artist El Greco painted the picture, he had lived there for 31 years. When one looks at the picture, one will see a storm approaching and will see the city as if it were lit by a flash of lightning. What main…

When he painted a portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552-1612), Giuseppe Arcimboldo used his imagination, and portrayed him as "Vertumnus," the Roman god of vegetation and the seasons. It's fun to find the different fruits, vegetables and flowers he used: pea-pod eyelids, a gourd for the forehead. Court painters of the time usually…

The figure has "figured" prominently in the choice of subject matter for many artists throughout history. Whether they may choose to depict it in an abstract or expressive form, most artists are quite capable of realistic portrayals of the human form. And all people know that one of the very first drawings made by young children is a symbol for…