TOS Crew Review of ARTistic Pursuits

ARTistic Pursuits is an amazing art program that I have done with my kids from the beginning of our homeschool journey. For the last few weeks I have been reviewing ARTistic Pursuits Middle School 6-8, Book 1: The Elements of Art and Composition with both of my kids.

Middle School 6-8, Book 1:The Elements of Art and Composition is for ages 11 and up. The cost is $47.95. This is a comb-bound book that lays flat. There are 68 lessons within 92 pages. This is a fully illustrated art program with 176 illustrations. Some of the illustrations are fully colored and others are black and white sketches. ARTistic Pursuit is a non-consumable book that can be used over and over with your kids.

As a parent you don’t need no artistic ability to teach your children art. That is truly the beauty of ARTistic Pursuits is that you don’t need to know nothing about art to teach your children.

  

I love that ARTistic Pursuits teaches history and culture alongside art. When you are learning about certain art techniques you get a bit of a history behind the art style and the application. Some of the lessons you will learn about space, line, texture, proportion, form, and much more.

There is an art supply list provided for each semester. Each lesson works on a specific element of art.

Each lesson is clearly defined with step by step instructions. You are given an objective with each lesson. The lessons are also flexible enough that you can customize it to fit your child if needed. 

You can find all the art supplies easily at your local hobby store or some of your favorite homeschool sites. ARTistic Pursuits also gives you an option to buy art supply packs for each book.

How did I use ARTistic Pursuits in our homeschool? 

My kids have used every book except the preschool book from ARTistic Pursuits. They have truly enjoyed learning art with ARTistic Pursuits. 

In this particular lesson learning about how to use a graphite pencils and using thick and thin lines. We decided to draw wheat since, we have been learning about Kansas History and about wheat. We had to use many different marks and shading to get the desired effects.

Bug's(12) picture is on the left and Little Man's(9) is the one on the right.

My daughter is 12 with special needs has some pretty severe learning disabilities and she thought that this particular book was a bit harder than the previous books. She wasn't able to grasp the concepts fully and due to her arthritis the techniques were difficult for her. I think she has did a pretty good job and isn't giving herself enough of credit for her masterpieces.

My son on the other hand is 9 and has done ARTistic Pursuits from the very beginning. Since he's much younger than the books age suggestion. I still felt he would learn much and be able to grasp all the concepts. Overall, he has done quite well and learned a lot about art and all the techniques. He was able to work at this level fairly easy. I think it was possible for him as we have done all the prior ARTistic Pursuits books.

You can easily start at your child's level and you don't have to start from the first book.

We basically worked on a lesson or two each week. For the purpose of this review we also didn't go in order and jumped around in the book.

Surprisingly Little Man wanted to draw dandelions for this project. Except he wasn't happy with just a pencil sketch and wanted to use colored sharpies to add some color to his project.

Bug was learning about perspective in this lesson. The object of the lesson was to draw either vertical or horizontal lines making it look like you are looking down something in the distance. She wasn't interested in creating her own project as with her having  Autism she was pretty stuck on drawing the picture that was featured in the illustration. Who I'm I to argue with someone's creative masterpiece they had their heart set on drawing.

I love ARTistic Pursuits and would highly recommend it whether you are a parent with knowledge of art or like me not an ounce of the how and what of teaching your children art.

Many of my fellow Crew members have done different books so stop by and see what they are saying about ARTistic Pursuits.

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