In the Spring Issue, we talked about how to build a habit of nature study. In it I shared a simple way to get started with nature study. The purpose? “You’re building a lifelong habit of enjoying nature, so make that your priority during your time together. If we make learning the priority, sometimes the enjoyment is missed. Learning will happen along the way when you let nature be the teacher.”

You can approach art in much the same way. Simply.

Begin with picture study. Nature study is about observing the beauty and wonder of nature… a masterpiece by our Creator. Art is an expression of our deeply creative God as His image bearers, so incorporating the study of beautiful artwork is a natural companion to the study of nature in your homeschool.

Picture study is just what it sounds like. You and your children look closely at a painting, observing and just enjoying it. It’s family-style learning at its best since all ages can do it together!

There are only three simple steps to picture study:

1. Choose a painting to observe. Or use the van Gogh painting provided above.
2. Ask your children to sit quietly and look at the painting.
3. After doing that for a time, take it away. Ask your children to tell you about (narrate) what they remember about it.

It’s that easy. For older students you can have them try to sketch the painting from memory if you would like, but you don’t have to! You could also discuss the techniques used by the artist to create the different moods and effects in paintings if you want. There are some wonderful series to help like the How Artists See series featured in our Great Books column.

Sometimes children need prompts to help them do picture study narrations—describing paintings from memory. Use these questions to help them! You can even brainstorm vocabulary words together to go with each question and let them choose from the words until they become more comfortable with the process.

• What did you see in the picture? People, mountains, animals, etc.
• What kinds of lines did you see in the picture?
• What different textures did you see?
• What shapes did you see in the painting?
• What were the colors? (Go deeper than just saying blue, red, etc. Were they vibrant? Dull? Moody?)
• How did the painting make you feel?