Discovering Great Artists

Discovering Great Artists is MaryAnn Kohl and Kim Solga's hands-on art-history activity book, a single bound volume profiling more than eighty master artists and pairing each with a studio-ready project in the artist's signature technique. It is one of the quiet fixtures of the elementary art-history shelf in Charlotte Mason, classical, and unit-study homeschools.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Subject-specialist / unit studies / hands-on activity book
Worldview	Faith-neutral
Grades	K-6 (publisher lists ages 4-12)
Formats	Print (paperback), Kindle
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	3 (materials gathering and supervision required)
ESA-common	Varies by state
Accredited	No
Established	First published 1996; current edition available through Chicago Review Press
Website	brightring.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Solid artist biographies and technique exposure; not an academic art-history program
Ease of teaching	3	Instructions are clear; parent supplies materials and supervises process
Content quality	5	Carefully chosen artists, genuinely technique-specific projects
Flexibility	5	Standalone book; use as spine, supplement, or one-project-a-week enrichment
Value for money	5	A full year of elementary art history for the price of a paperback
Worldview scope	5	Usable across every worldview family
Visual/design	3	Black-and-white line-art layout with simple photographs; paperback production values
Support resources	3	Online supplement available; otherwise self-contained

Who the publisher is

Discovering Great Artists was written by MaryAnn Kohl and Kim Solga and first published in 1996 by Bright Ring Publishing. Bright Ring is MaryAnn Kohl's own imprint, built across a catalog of "process art" activity books for children. Scribble Art, First Art, Preschool Art, Mudworks, Science Arts, Math Arts, and Storybook Art, each developed from Kohl's classroom and early-childhood teaching work. The current edition of Discovering Great Artists is distributed through Chicago Review Press, widening the book's retail availability.

Kohl's body of work has earned an unusual level of acceptance among elementary educators. The books are used across Charlotte Mason, Waldorf-curious, classical-progressive, unschool-leaning, and traditional homeschool families; they are standard library stock in early-childhood programs. Kim Solga, the co-author, is a painter and author in her own right whose technique-teaching books sit adjacent on the same shelf. The combination of Kohl's activity-design instinct and Solga's studio knowledge produced, in Discovering Great Artists, a book that neither author would have written alone.

The book is faith-neutral. Artists are introduced by their life and work without theological framing; projects are techniques, not sermons. A family reading about Fra Angelico or Michelangelo will encounter the artist's religious subject matter as biographical fact; the book does not argue for or against the faith traditions those artists worked within. Catholic, Protestant, secular, and Jewish families have all used the book as a spine without modification.

The core pedagogy

The house method is chronological artist-by-artist study paired with a hands-on project in the artist's signature technique. Each artist occupies one or two pages. The pages contain: a short biography (a paragraph or two, enough to give the artist a context and a story), a list of supplies needed for the project, step-by-step instructions for the project, and occasional black-line illustrations showing the technique. The child reads or listens to the biography, then makes the project.

Signature mechanics: (1) Technique specificity. The book does not ask the child to "paint in the style of Van Gogh"; it asks the child to make a textured oil-crayon piece using the palette-knife-like techniques Van Gogh's impasto brushwork suggests. Each project is a real technique in the artist's signature approach, simplified to child-accessible materials. (2) Chronological organization. Artists are arranged from Renaissance through the twentieth century (Fra Angelico to Georgia O'Keeffe), giving a family using the book cover-to-cover a rough timeline of Western art history. (3) Low-cost materials. Supplies lean toward what most homeschool households already have, crayon, tempera, paper, scissors, glue, cardboard. Occasional projects require specific materials (clay, foil, oil pastels) but none require studio-tier investment. (4) Biography as spine. A family can use Discovering Great Artists as their entire elementary art-history curriculum: one artist a week for thirty-plus weeks of the school year, biography read aloud and project made, with the child's completed projects filed in a portfolio.

A day in the life

A family running Discovering Great Artists as their art-history spine on a Friday-afternoon cadence spends approximately forty-five minutes to an hour per artist. The parent reads the artist's biography aloud while the children listen (fifteen to twenty minutes if the biography is short or paused for questions). The parent then reads the supply list and the project instructions; the children gather materials, put on aprons or smocks, and spend thirty to forty-five minutes making the project. The finished project dries on a counter or goes into a labeled folder; next Friday the family moves to the next artist in the chronological sequence.

Families running the book as one-a-week enrichment alongside a more formal art-history curriculum (such as The Artistic Pursuit or Harmony Fine Arts) pick projects selectively rather than sequentially, using Discovering Great Artists as a source of hands-on activities corresponding to artists encountered in the other program.

What they do exceptionally well

Technique-accurate projects. This is the book's defining strength. Many "art history for kids" activity books ask children to make crafts that vaguely gesture at the style of a famous painting. Kohl and Solga's projects are real. The Jackson Pollock project actually teaches drip-painting with the physical movements Pollock used. The Seurat project teaches pointillism with the slow dot-by-dot patience the style demands. Children come away from a Kohl-and-Solga project with a physical understanding of what the artist did, not just a decorative souvenir.

Artist selection. The book covers more than eighty master artists from Fra Angelico to Georgia O'Keeffe, distributed across movements and centuries in a way that gives a child a real map of Western art history rather than a greatest-hits reel. Women artists, non-European artists (within the scope), and less-celebrity masters receive real treatment alongside the obvious names.

Price. List price is $18.95 through the publisher as of April 2026, with used copies available starting around $9 through Amazon and AbeBooks. A family can purchase the book once and use it across multiple children and multiple years. This is one of the cheapest credible art-history resources in the homeschool market.

Durability across worldviews and methods. The book appears on Charlotte Mason reading lists, classical art-study supplements, Waldorf enrichment recommendations, unit-study curricula, and traditional homeschool bookshelves. Few single-volume resources integrate this broadly.

What they do poorly

Biographies are concise. The artist biographies are enough to contextualize the project but not enough to serve as a complete introduction to the artist's life and significance. Families wanting substantial biographical reading pair Discovering Great Artists with a separate biographical source, Mike Venezia's "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists" series is the common complement.

Visual reproduction of art is minimal. The book is a paperback with modest illustration. Reproductions of the artists' actual work are small and black-and-white where they appear; children need access to a separate source (library books, online museum collections, Google Arts & Culture) to see the art in color and scale. The book tells you what to do; it does not show you the masterpiece you are stylizing.

Parent materials preparation. Projects require materials gathering. A parent running the book across a full school year of thirty-plus artists will spend real time maintaining an art-supply cupboard. This is normal for any hands-on art program but worth noting for families used to paper-only curricula.

No structured sequence of skill-building. The book is organized by artist chronology rather than by technique progression. A child working through it in order does not progressively build pencil drawing, then painting, then sculpture in a developmental arc; they encounter whichever technique the next artist's signature work requires. This is a feature for art-history orientation and a bug for art-technique instruction. Families who want a progressive drawing-skill arc paired with art history typically run Discovering Great Artists alongside a separate technique resource such as Drawing with Children.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Discovering Great Artists if: you want a faith-neutral, broadly usable, hands-on art-history spine for elementary grades; you run a Charlotte Mason or unit-study curriculum and want a project book to accompany picture-study; you want one volume that covers the year rather than a multi-book program; you value technique-accurate projects over decorative crafts; you have limited budget for art materials and prefer low-cost common supplies.

• Skip Discovering Great Artists if: you want full-color art-book visuals of the master works themselves (pair with a separate book instead); you want substantial biographical reading built into the spine; you want progressive technique instruction building skill over time; you want video-based art instruction; your children are too old for the K-6 target range (the book can extend to middle school with parent adaptation but is not aimed there).

Cost honest assessment

Discovering Great Artists lists at $18.95 paperback through Bright Ring Publishing as of April 2026. Used copies run as low as $9 through Amazon, AbeBooks, and other secondary markets. The Kindle edition is priced similarly to print. A family adds materials costs, likely $30-$80 per year for consumable supplies if running the book through a full thirty-week sequence, depending on what the household already has.

Compared to Harmony Fine Arts (Barb McCoy's art-history curriculum at approximately $30-$50 per grade level plus materials), Discovering Great Artists is a single-purchase resource that spans multiple grades. Compared to The Artistic Pursuit (roughly $49 per book plus consumables), Discovering Great Artists is less comprehensive but dramatically lower-cost. Compared to How Great Thou Art (a Christian art-history curriculum at approximately $50 per level), Discovering Great Artists is worldview-neutral and less expensive.

For most families the all-in annual cost of running Discovering Great Artists as the art-history spine, including materials, is $45-$95 for the first year and substantially less in subsequent years when the book is reusable.

ESA eligibility notes

Because Discovering Great Artists is a faith-neutral, single-volume activity book, ESA eligibility in permissive states is generally straightforward, the title often appears on approved-vendor lists through marketplaces like Amazon or Rainbow Resource where those marketplaces are ESA-integrated. Because the book is technically a single trade paperback rather than a curriculum bundle, some ESA programs classify it as a supplementary rather than a core resource, which affects approval thresholds in specific states. Families should verify title-level approval through their specific state portal, particularly in states that distinguish between curriculum purchases and supplementary book purchases.

Alternatives

• How Great Thou Art, a family would choose How Great Thou Art over Discovering Great Artists for an explicitly Christian art-history curriculum with video instruction and progressive technique-building, accepting higher cost and a specific worldview framing.
• Harmony Fine Arts (Barb McCoy), a family would choose Harmony Fine Arts over Discovering Great Artists for a grade-level art and music curriculum that coordinates with Charlotte Mason reading rotations, with more extensive biographical content.
• Mike Venezia "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists" series, a family would choose the Venezia series over Discovering Great Artists for biographical-depth artist profiles with full-color reproductions, then pair with a separate technique resource for hands-on projects.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the publisher's catalog and product pages at brightring.com and brightring.com/product/discovering-great-artists, book samples and format details on Amazon, and the online art supplement hosted by Bright Ring Publishing in April 2026. We cross-referenced authorship and publication history against Chicago Review Press distribution listings. Prices and program details verified April 2026.