Artistic Pursuits Review

Artistic Pursuits was given to me recently to review. I have a daughter in 8th grade, so I gave it to her to look over and use. She loves art, so I thought this program would be a good fit for her.

Artistic Pursuits is a non-consumable art program has books that can be purchased for Preschool through Senior High. We were given the Junior High Book One “The Elements of Art and Composition.”

The book has a page at the beginning for the parent and another page for the student. You get a list of what is included in the book along with the art supplies you need to purchase. There is not much to purchase and they are inexpensive items.

The book we received consisted of the elements of art and the composition or principles of art. Each topic or unit has 4 lessons. The first lesson is the topic and assignment. The second lesson is art appreciation and history. The third lesson is techniques and the fourth lesson is applying the techniques.

They suggest 2 classes per week about 1 hour long.  Since there are 18 units, there are enough lessons to make up a year long course.

The pages of the book are high quality and feel nice to the touch. I like the printing and arrangements on the pages. The pages are connected by a comb binding with a plastic cover on the front.

There is a page of reading for each lesson. Your child is expected to read the page (or have you read it to them) and then do the suggested activity at the bottom.

We like to use a self teaching approach to our homeschooling, so I gave the book to my daughter to use. I expected her to dive in and run with this book. Instead she got stuck and didn’t do any of the suggested activities. She said there was a lot of reading. From what I looked at the reading did not engage students and teach them what they needed to know to be able to draw. Maybe we should have used the books before this one to get a better base of this curriculum. Maybe I should have spent a few lessons reading the lessons with her and helping her get started. I will do that with her and see if that helps her get started. I just didn’t have enough time to implement that in the time I was given to review.

I think if your child is motivated to work through an art course, then this course will work for that type of child. It might also work best for a student that is a visual learner where they can read something and understand it. I would love to see some videos developed to be used in cooperation with this course.

You can view all the Artistic Pursuits books at http://www.artisticpursuits.com/ajh.htm and purchase them for $42.95. They have sample pages there where you can see the beautiful pages and get an idea of what the student will see when they open the books.

As a member of the Homeschool Crew, I was given this product to review. I was not paid for this post and do not have to return the product to the vendor.  The opinions expressed in this post are those of the blog owner (me).