EXPLORE ART: Cezanne Inspire Fruit Still Life

A simple still life, an arrangement of objects, can be a fun children's art project.
Creating a simple still life can teach them how to observe objects and reflect what they see.  I am going to use the artist who was going to 'conquer Paris with an apple', Paul Cezanne to provide a few examples of a fruit still life. 
Cezanne was a french, post- impressionist who paved the way for the development of modern art.  He is widely known for his still life compositions, which he painted over 200 of, and his landscapes.
Cezanne was a master of elements, taking great care in the color, tone and composition of his images.  He found importance in the sensation of how we saw an object and the abstraction of nature.
Start a discussion with your child about how Cezanne re-created the image of the fruit still life.  What colors did he use for the fruit, how did he arrange the fruit in his image?  Materials:

• Fruit to arrange
• Paper
• Construction paper
• Paint
• Fruit Sponge Stamps (found at the Dollar Store)

   First we arranged our fruit in a bowl, making sure to be able to see each piece.  Don't mind the pepper it's standing in as a pear.


Cy choose three colors of construction paper of his bowls.  Draw a simple outline of the bowl shape and then cut it out.Using a glue stick allow your child to place the cut out bowl on their paper.  Ask your child if they would like to work with the paper vertical or horizontal, often they don't know they have the option and use it however it's given to them.

 Ask your child what colors they will need for the fruit, having them pay attention to natural colors just like Cezanne.  Cy named his fruit colors and we poured a little of each color onto paper plates to stamp our fruit sponges in.

With paint on each sponge your child can press and stamp the shape onto their paper.  Now this is the important part of the project where you want your child to look at the arrangement of the real fruit still life and use that as a guide to where they stamp each piece of fruit in their picture.  Just how Cezanne took care to study his composition, arrangement of fruit.
And there you have it a Cezanne inspired Fruit Still life using fruit sponge stamps.  The only drawback of using the stamps are the shapes/sizes are predetermined, if you can't see our strawberries are the same size as our apple.

For older children or another still life project to follow the stamped fruit have your child paint their own fruit.  They can still study the elements of Cezanne, natural colors and shapes and composition.  They will have to focus even more on observing colors, shapes, sizes and arrangement without the aid of stamp shapes.

Who knew EXPLORE ART could be fun and tasty!  Enjoy your child's fruit still life by displaying it and enjoy your real fruit by eating it. 
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