JOINT Lesson of the week

Aboriginal Bark Paintings

 

This is a lesson/activity based on the one in the book, Art from Different Cultures. And Year 3 have made it our own every year.

 

So crumpled up rough beige sugar paper became the bark. They sketched their chosen animal one and added some colour with some chalks. This made a nice contrast to the bright earthy paints they'd use next.

 

Then the aboriginal dot style began! It was all too easy for them to hap-hazardly dab the cotton buds randomly so I had to guide them back to the original Aborigine paintings and get them to think why they're different; what technique is different? How?

 

Of course my little 7-8 year olds won't be the aboriginal artists with 30 years plus of practice but we all know and remind ourselves, even me, that we can start practicing at any time!

 



Some children wanted to use the aboriginal dreamtime story symbols to tell a picture story around and about their animal.

Fingertips! The best!

First week back...

...two days in and I'm toasted!!! My Christmas holidays must have been relaxing!

I've come across some new and super lesson ideas this week, most likely to be tweaked for me and my ways. The art teacher community has helped me build a much more varied and fluid curriculum for the school and I am lucky that I have the freedom to do so. I'm already liking to keep things fresh and new every year, for the kids' benefits as well as mine. And to vary the corridors from term to term, year to year.

 

Today I had my lovely Year 4s, both classes. As it is an incomplete week being the first week back and all, I don't start big projects as kids are still on holidays. Go figure. That'd be nice. Anyway, it's too much hassle and catch-up. 

So I had a cool and fun activity from Goddess Patti at Deep Space Sparkle, one of her 45 minute ones. 

http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2011/04/04/robot-line-drawing/

 

Doing this today and following my evaluation I've been inspired to build a block of focused lessons across the key stage on line. Some of year 4's line creation and control was rather dubious and concerning so I thought, across the board, line work should be practised at the start of term, or any time I guess, to get their eye and hand back in after the holidays. A possible block for after Easter so nobody misses out.

Year 4 also learn a little about Wasily Kandinsky and his passion for music and painting. We have fun with music seeing how it motivates us to create shape and line at the end of the summer term but this could be spring, again to keep their hand in.

Originally from http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=698199

Year 3 can have a go at line drawing Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night. We do a lesson on mark marking that ties in with Van Gogh so this would work together.

Originally from http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=741877

 I could even make use of this Pin: 

http://pinterest.com/pin/24136547976922989/

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Lesson of the Week...Weather in Art

I love this one. Weather. Art. Together. Awesome. 

The tangents you (well, ok, I) can take this off are deep and endless but with my little year 3s it's just a small step for now. I'd like to eventually set up plans for weather in art up to year 6 and bring in 'meteoropathy. This fascinates me, ever since I saw Ola Rek exhibiting at the National Gallery in Glasgow a couple of years ago. She's October's artist of the month.

Art Lesson of the Week

This week's lesson was a good one for a few reasons.

Year 3: City of Fratsia, sketching, oil pastel and wash.

One: they learnt something new. Always good. Today was perspective and 3D work.
Two: they practised other sketching skills.
Three: they needed to delve into their imaginations to start with.
Four: it also required a bit of 'drawing what you see' whilst in that imagination. Always a tricky one, especially with the younger ones who have this ability to transpose any object regardless of what angle they view it from, to front on and draw it thus.

It was the lovely and mystical city of Fratsia that was the class topic and we just followed it in art but creating our own cities (imagination) of Fratsia. We read the book, 'Sanji and The Baker' (by Robin Tzannes and Korky Paul) and studied the city drawings and perspective (new word). We loved how the buildings towered off to the side and rose up the hill. We also loved the colour and medium that Paul had used. We thought about what we would see if we looked straight at a house? What would we see if we were sitting down on a seat in the street looking to the house to our right? (Observational drawing)

 



We worked with our basic sketching skills to plan our city and think about how the buildings we have created from our imagination would look like from an angle. This was a challenge for most of them. But once they saw what they were looking at and applied it to theirs, it flowed and clicked :-) We then worked with oil pastels and built up this beautiful city like Korky Paul did. Some chalk pastels slipped into the oil pastel box inadvertently so that became a lesson in itself as they were finding out the difference between chalks and oils, in feel, effect, the residue it makes. This was great fun, coming up with adjectives to tell the difference.

I encouraged them to use the oil pastels as we were finishing up with a wash of the colour of their choice (out of red, orange or blue). So they learned they can end with a wash, not just begin with one. I wanted them to see what happens when watery paint touches wax or oil. Those that used chalk in places had a lesson too. they predicted and observed what happened when they ran their final wash over. It did create an awesome sandstormy effect for some! Lovely! I download some of their pics soonish.

In hindsight, I would probably work on laying down more prep work for perspective and focus on observational drawing for a little while...outside of the classroom, drawing the school buildings from different angles. This could be brought in as a follow-up in perspective in year 4.

 

My recent purchase for school…

…well, OK, for me mostly. Mad Murphy prompted me to look at this; I chose the Modern artists, maybe the other book with 50 not so modern artists will be on my wishlist!



The first page I randomly turned to was Kasimir Malevich, an Russian artist I had never heard of. His first picture shown was his Black Square:



Hubby was questioning why artists paint what appears to be something so bland on the surface. I agreed but mentioned that some artists were making waves, creating a new school of art and were the movers and shakers of their time. They could have been protesting against some other movement or aiming to catch the audience’s attention or to start a new trend. And so it appears that Malevich was doing just so.

"The Black Square of Kazimir Malevich is one of the most famous creations of Russian art in the last century. The first Black Square was painted in 1915 to become the turning point in the development of Russian avant-garde. Black Square against white background became the symbol, the basic element in the system of the art of suprematism, the step into the new art."
Source:http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/04/b2003/hm4_1_30.html)

Taking in the Rye. 1911

Suprematism. 1915

I’ve found a great site for abstract info and inspiration: Abstract Art Framed. It doesn't just cover abstract artists and their work but also inspiration, ideas and tips.

In year 3 we're looking at the abstract artist, Sean Scully. he enjoys working with blocks, lines and colour which is essentially the definition of abstract art. We had a great discussion wondering why his piece 'Catherine' was so called! One boy has taken to the concept of abstract art very quickly and seemed to explain it clearly...he being not so articultae in other areas...something clicked with him!

Beautiful Oops!

(Apologies for the dubious editing in this post...it wasn't playing ball tonight. Not operator error. Honest.)

 

Such a great lesson! Such a good idea! I came across this book by accident, just surfing the Pinterest treasure chest for art inspiration.
 

It's by Barney Salzberg...he's also written other young children's books, 'Animal Kisses' and 'I Love Dogs' .

Already I've had some of the children come to me wanting to start again as they "have made a mistake/done it wrong/don't like it". Unless the project is completely unworkable or right off topic I will always tell them to give it a chance.

I've used the examples of those children to start this lesson with Year 3. I'm doing this with Year 3 as it's their first year in Key Stage 2 and they now have Art with me rather than with their class teacher. They told me they feel nervous as well as excited and that they are worried about making mistakes. PERfect introduction to this book and this session. 

Here's a video of the book. Enjoy!
 


It helps young children to have fun with their mistakes. I gave them a few ripped bits of paper, heaps of scraps and some pens and glue. They set themselves challenges, they even set their classmates challenges. Not one child told me they had no ideas or felt uninspired. Such fresh, unfettered, unrestricted, unassuming minds. I hope that I help them stay so, and as a result I make them feel secure in their art lesson, no fear of making mistakes.

From a scrap of red cellophane

A red squiggly line 

    

A hole ripped in the paper became the mouth