ARTistic Pursuits

ARTistic Pursuits
Junior High level, book one
Price: $42.95

About ARTistic Pursuits
ARTisitc Pursuits is a comprehensive art curriculum designed to be easy enough for the student to walk through it mostly unassisted and yet deep enough to cover a wide variety of art techniques as well as cover art history. We received Junior High level, book one for the purposes of reviewing, so I will be referring to that from here on out...different levels cover different art skills and you can read more about ARTistic Pursuit's philosophy and approach to teaching art.

ARTistic Pursuits Junior High book one contains 16 units and each unit has 4 lessons, making this a year's worth of Art curriculum completing 2 lessons each week. Each unit is broken into four lessons:
Lesson One is Building a Visual Vocabulary. This is a topic of focus to observe in their environment to make real world to artwork connections. The focus for Unit One is SPACE. All lessons within the unit will address SPACE.

Lesson Two is Art Appreciation and Art History. This is a look at how art masters have used this focus topic in their works of art and learn how to apply it in practice. They also learn about artists, great works of art, and art in different cultures. Unit one features "Portrait of the Elephant, Dal Badal, Chasing His Attendant" showing how the use of SPACE is used in this work and then talks about Indian art and different cultures.

Lesson Three gives students the opportunity to practice the Techniques they learn in creating an original work of art. The technique for Unit One is Making a rough sketch and thinking through where to place the object within the SPACE of the page without taking the time to do a lengthy sketch.

Lesson Four is the Application phase of the unit, using the elements or techniques that has been practiced to create a final project.

My Art Loving Boy really enjoyed working through the ARTistic Pursuits book. His art really improved in the short time he had been working through this book. He found the lessons to be very helpful and learned some skills that he could begin to apply to his art right from the very first lesson. For instance, in lesson one, it suggested writing his signature in the upper right hand corner of the page (like you would normally sign it) and then stretch his signature from the left edge of the paper to the right edge to give a feel for the space on the page. He found that it took a couple of tries to fill up the space and he learned how much space it would take and to judge how size it to fill the page.

What we LOVED:
The lessons were easy to work through. Lou was able to do this completely on his own and create work that was continually improving as he learned to apply different techniques to his artwork. I loved that the supply list used basic and readily available art supplies and was pretty inexpensive. I love that the ARTistic Pursuits curriculum is non-consumable and can be used over and over.

What was a CHALLENGE:
Art has always been a tough subject for me to work in. We get so caught up the the 3 R's and we forget the things that make school a joy, like art. We had a very BUSY month and it was difficult to work everything in and did not get as far into this ARTistic Pursuits book as I would have liked. Another challenge was to schedule it in. You cannot schedule an hour for art...it may take 15 minutes to work through a lesson...or it could take 3 hours...however inspiration motivates...you just cannot say, put it away for today and then you can get back to it later or tomorrow...you have to let the creative juices flow and continue until the artwork is finished. The price is a little higher than I would normally consider and was originally a concern, but after seeing the results and my son's reaction to what he did, I would not hesitate to purchase more of these books.

Overall, we were VERY pleased with the ARTistic Pursuits curriculum...the lessons followed a logical sequence and allowed for quite a bit of application. Lou's art improved from the very first lesson and he is looking forward to working through the rest of the book. I think he would really enjoy working through the rest of the books ARTistic Pursuits has available.

See what my fellow crew mates have to say about ARTistic Pursuits here

Disclaimer: I received this item for the purpose of writing a fair and honest review. I received no other compensation. All the opinions expressed are my own.