Create Claude Monet’s French Impressionist Bridge Video
In this video art lesson, you’ll continue learning about French Impressionist painting as you also learn to create Claude Monet’s iconic bridge.
If you missed watching Part 1 of this series, you may want to go watch it first.
Claude Monet – French Impressionist Lesson Curriculum
Materials Needed for the Claude Monet Bridge Art Lesson
- Tape
- Sponge
- Water-soluble paint
- Water
- Paper plate
- Thick paper or canvas
Scroll to the bottom to see photos of Claude Monet’s bridge painting.
Learn More About Claude Monet and French Impressionist Painting
In this lesson, use the video transcript below to follow along with Barbara as she shows you how to create French Impressionist trees, water and a bridge.
So, one of the things that Monet’s Garden had was a beautiful bridge, and so one of the things I would like us to do today is make a bridge. And so, what I’ve done – I don’t know if you can see this – I’m going to do this on another piece of paper so you can see it as well.
One of the things that we can do is, we can take tape and we’re going to make a bridge with tape. And so that’s what we’re going to do. So, Monet’s bridge looked very Japanese, so the Japanese bridges are footbridges, they’re made for people to walk across, not cars, to go across. So, we’re going to take our tape, and we’re going to try to make it in a circle. Just a real gentle circle. So, it’s very hard to bend tape around a circle, so the easiest way to do it is to just tear it into little pieces. And just kind of bend it around a circle, because you know if you tried to bend this tape, what would happen? You just have big wrinkles in it, and it wouldn’t look good. And then, pretty soon you’d have paint going underneath the tape and it wouldn’t be a nice clean thing.
So, we’re going to do two rows of this tape. Here’s the end – two rows of this tape, one row for the bottom and one row for the handrail. Because you know if you’re going to walk across the bridge like this across a pond, with water lilies in it, the last thing you want to do is not have a handrail because you don’t want to fall in the water. So, we’re going to do our handrail here. So, this would be what you’d hold onto as you walked across the bridge. And then one of the things that you also need is, you need some pieces that were going up and down so that you wouldn’t fall through because you don’t want to fall through the bridge and end up in the water.
So, I was just talking with my friend this morning and I said do you think that when Monet was a young person maybe he was 20, 25? Do you think that he thought, “I’m going to be somebody who’s going to change art. And I’m going to get everyone to look at things the way I do, and when they see when they see the work, they’re going to think what a beautiful impression it is of the harbor or the tree or the garden.” And so, I don’t think he thought that, but he started a whole thing of art that’s called Impressionism because of the way he saw light bouncing back and forth off of things. He wanted to just paint an impression of something, and not have it look exactly like it, and so a lot of artists started doing it after he started doing it. They started using that same technique and it started a whole bunch of artists, called Impressionists. Because they all decided to paint how they felt about things and how they saw the light rather than how it really actually looked.
So, one of the things I’ve got here is – this is really cool – this is a little sponge on the stick and so, I’m going to do the same thing I did on my other thing. I’m going to paint some green at the top for the trees. They’re going to be coming down here. They’re going to be coming down through this. This is really fun. I like this one. Look how easy that is to do. So, they’re coming down on the top of this pond, which is going to be at the bottom. I think you could do this. You could get a sponge or paint like this. It’s pretty easy. You know, and it’s your artwork, so you know when it’s your heart work. You can make it any way you want. So, if you wanted to put a little bit of blue up here in the trees – sometimes they’re darker at the top, like a little blue in the top. That would be alright, because it would be your work, so it could be any way you wanted it.
OK, so now we’re going to do the bottom here, which is going to be the water. Now you notice I have paint on my hands, but you know what happens – this is water soluble paint, so water soluble means that it mixes with water. And it means that it will wash right off. Where’s my white, let’s get a little white in here. So, I can just wash my hands with soap and water when I’m done and – let’s get a little the purple in there, maybe under the bridge will put the purple because you know it’s probably darker there, because it’s probably in the shadow little bit. So, does that look like water to you? I think it looks pretty good like water.
OK, so now what we’re going to do is we’re going to let this also dry. And I want to put some. I want to put – you know, one of the things I wanted to do here that I didn’t do is I wanted to put some flowers in this. You know, water lilies have flowers on them. And often times they’re pink. So, we’re just going to put a little pink flowers in here. We’ve got some white and we to some pink. Does that look like flowers? I think it looks a little bit like flowers. OK, so, we’ve got our bridge and we’re just going to let that dry for a minute.
Golden Road Arts Provides Free Online Art Lessons
If you haven’t watched it yet, be sure to watch Part 1 in the Claude Monet art lesson video series to paint your own French Impressionist water lily painting, then continue on through Part 3, where Barbara creates fun flowers and lily pads.
If you enjoy these free art lessons and want to help make them available, please consider making a donation. Golden Road Arts is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
