10 sessions; 45 minutes per session

Select one masterpiece to reproduce on a primed bottle. The students will write a letter to the artist as a “message in the bottle”.

•Poster board
•Markers
•Pencils & erasers
•Art history books
•Internet access
•Plastic primer
•30 glass bottles without labels
•Paint brushes
•Acrylic paint
•Saral
•Pen & Ink and paper

Need these materials? Visit Blick!

1.The student will research artists’ whose work the student enjoys.
2.The student will research the artist and write biographical pages about the artist.
3. The artist's name________________________
date of birth: ______________
places of birth:____________________
date of death (if applicable):___________________
place of death: _________________
cause of death:________________________
art movement (such as Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Regionalism)___________________________________
4. The individual student will either reproduce the masterpiece on a primed glass bottle (spray bottle with plastic primer) or will create their own painting based upon (inspired by) the artist he or she studied. For example, the student may do a painting of tulips in the style of Van Gogh using Prussian blue outlines and a thick impasto painting technique.
5. The student will write a letter as the message in the bottle. He or she may choose to pretend to be the artist and to write to a second artist, or he or she may write a letter as himself or herself to the original artist (as if the artist is still alive and could read about how his or her work inspired the new art work).

The students will present facts about his or her chosen artist to the class. Rubric for self-assessment of bottle painting project.

Art timeline: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/intro/atr/10sm.htm

I provided a list of famous paintings students could select. It is a starting point, but you may allow any famous work. We started by having students view art books, then we booked a computer lab for one class period so that students could finalize their choices.
Albert Bierstadt Yosemite Valley (1865)
Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe (1962)
Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (1920)
Diego Rivera’s The Flower Carrier (1935)
Diego Velazquez’s Las Meninas (Maids of Honor) (1656)
Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1881-2)
Edouard Manet’s The Railway (1873)
Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893)
Edward Hopper’s The Night Hawks (1939)
Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara (1857)
Frederic Edwin Church’s The Icebergs (1861)
Frederick Leighton’s Flaming June (1895)
Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886)
Georgia O’Keefe’s Jack in the Pulpit III (1930)
Georgia O’Keefe’s Oriental Poppies (1928)
Grant Wood’s American Gothic (1930)
Gustav Klimt’s Der Kuss (The Kiss) (1903)
Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street - Rainy Weather (1877)
Henry Matisse’s Spanish Woman with Tambourine (1909)
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas’s The Dance Class (1873)
Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 (1948)
James McNeill Whistler Whistler’s Mother (1871)
Jean-Francois Millet The Angelus (1857-9)
Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665)
John Singer Sargent’s Capri (1878)
John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau) (1884)
John Singer Sargent’s Robert Louis Stevenson (1887)
Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1829-32)
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) (1503-4)
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (1495-8)
Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (1912)
Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Sistine Chapel (including the Creation of Adam) (1508-1512)
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937)
Paul Cézanne’s The Card Players (1888)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Dance at Bougival (1883)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Two Sisters (On the Terrace) (1881)
Rembrandt van Rijn’s De Nachtwacht (The Night Watch) (1642)
Rembrandt van Rijn’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633)
Rene Margritte’s The Son of Man (1964)
Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory (1931)
Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1485-7)
Thomas Cole’s View from Mt. Holyoke, Northampton (1836)
Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises (1889)
Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889)
Vincent Van Gogh’s Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (1888)
Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VIII (1923)
Winslow Homer Snap the Whip (1873)
Winslow Homer The Gulf Stream (1887)

[5-8] Students intentionally take advantage of the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes to enhance communication of their experiences and ideas

[5-8] Students analyze, describe, and demonstrate how factors of time and place (such as climate, resources, ideas, and technology) influence visual characteristics that give meaning and value to a work of art

[5-8] Students describe and place a variety of art objects in historical and cultural contexts

[5-8] Students know and compare the characteristics of artworks in various eras and cultures

Salvador Dali, Honor Daumier, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Juan Gris, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Roy Lichtenstein, Edvard Munch, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol

Western Art, Post-Impressionism, Impressionism, Harlem Renaissance, European Art

Sculpture, Acrylic

History/Social Studies, Multicultural Studies