Jump! Mag

Art & History

How To Look At Art

Have you got a favourite painting? Mine is ‘A Portrait of the Countess Golovine’ painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, sometime around 1797. It is, unsurprisingly, a portrait of Countess Varvara Nikolaevna Golovine, a talented musician and artist from Russia. Elisabeth and the Countess became great friends and I love the way the Countess is smiling in the portrait, with a red shawl draped around her shoulders and her dark curly hair swept up in behind a scarf. The painting belongs to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, which is one of my favourite galleries.

I love going to art galleries and looking at paintings, but at first I found it quite a daunting thing to do. Have you ever been to an art gallery and not known where to start? Or heard art critics talking about symbolism, composition and form but not understood? Sometimes looking at art can sound difficult, and talking about it can be a whole other language!

But looking at art doesn’t have to be complicated. Things like symbolism, where objects in paintings are used to represent something that’s happening, like a skull symbolising death, can be important and the composition, or the way things in the painting are arranged, can tell us a lot about the artist and why the painted what they did.

Written By You

Alice Gives Advice – Written By You

Alice M is 10 years old, and has some great advice on being a girl

The Joy about being a girl is you get more opportunities because people mostly trust girls better than boys. I know that it majorly sexist but technically that is what happens in life.

We all know that girls have to go through a HARD time when they are older but it is sometimes worth it, GIRLS are the ones that actually produce the baby, GIRLS are the ones who have super fashion sense and are the ones who are unique with any kind of style Goth, jumpy, and get have any personality they want to and we wear make-up to make ourselves look nice, scary, horrible anything you want, we can style hair, have fun and mess around.

Some people don’t like being girls mostly because their scared, I am too, but if you think about it there generally is nothing to be afraid of. You have people all along the way to help you enter adulthood and become bigger and better, people will help you when it is hard and when you need constant monitoring but after all that has passed, I will guarantee that you will have had the time of your LIFE being a girl.

So what I am trying to say is: enjoy being a girl, enjoy having horrid things done to you (I know that sounds backwards but trust me, it I’ll be worth it) because when that is all over you’ll miss it.

Featured Image by D Sharon Pruitt

Art & History

An Aztec Beauty Regime

Our contributor Dr Corrinne Burns is a chemist (not a person who works in a pharmacy and doles out medicine, but an expert in the science of chemistry). She is an exhibit designer at the Science Museum, London and Guardian columnist.

She was interested in Aztec women’s beauty routines and shares her fascinating report on Jump! Mag for Girls.

Written By You

The Necklace – A Shooting Star Story – Written By You

When I first saw the silver sparkling necklace in the jewellers shop window, I thought it was just an ordinary diamond necklace. However, the twinkling diamond at the centre of the polished masterpiece held an emotional attraction for me, as it reminded me of a similar diamond on my grandmother’s ring, so I went in to inquire its price.

Art & History, Written By You

Great Women You Should Know – The Suffragettes – Things That Shape Our Lives

Contributor Kait is 15 years old. This is her fictional diary entry of a 14 year old girl called Daisy, whose homework this week is an essay about Women’s Rights and Equality.