I have had an amazing week at local school in Basildon working on a large project as part of the schools art week. The project is not quite finished yet, there are a few finishing touches to be made, however I wanted to share the children's brilliant work with you all.
The aim of the project was to encourage all the pupils in the school to embrace art and craft ideas, techniques and methods for the duration of the school week. The theme that we looked at for the art week was "Me, Myself and I".
Prior to the art week I visited the school and carried out a training session with teachers on how to draw a portrait - working out measuring systems to teach the pupils how to draw a portrait to scale. Once the pupils had practiced this the teachers encouraged them to create a piece of work where they drew half their face to the best of their ability and the other half using images that represented their favourite things. Some pupils collaged these, some drew images, some stuck objects and craft materials onto their drawing - using these objects and collage materials to represent the facial features. I will post a couple of these pictures when they have been completed.
The project I worked on with the pupils involved a learning about using a paint brush, mixing colour, ratios of paint to use, exploration of marks, using modroc as a sculpture material and being confident in their own unique talent.
For the first part of the sculptureeach pupil was given a circle form with a hole in the centre and covered this with newspaper - this would provide a base for our modroc to adhere to.
Once the circle was covered in newspaper, it was time to get good and messy covering the circle with modroc. I was impressed with how well all pupils from year 3 - to year 6 managed to smooth the modroc and create a solid base. Once these were covered they were left for 24 hours to dry prior to painting.
Before the pupils painted their circular sculpture we practiced some brush work, looking at what marks we could make using the brush, holding it in various positions. Pupils learnt that they could create fluid lines, holding the brush at the end of the handle and that they could make more controlled marks the colser they held the brush to the bristles.
Once we had explored our mark making, we moved on to colour mixing. Each pupil painted a positive image using black powder paint. Pupils then chose a primary colour and it's complementary colour i.e. red and green, yellow and purple or blue and orange. Using powder paint the pupils were challenged to mix as many different shades and tones of the two colours as they could and paint in each of the sections created in the pictures negative space. A fantastic example of this is pictured above. The pupils really enjoyed colour mixing and learning how to use powder paint as a medium. Learning that they could mix strong tonal colours by adding more powder and lighter shades by adding more water to the mixture.
Finally we got around to painting our circle sculpture. For this part we changed medium to acrylic paint. Once we all had our aprons on, the children painted their circle in their own design which they had previously planned out in their sketchbooks.
The pupils painted a base colour - or mixture of colours onto their circle before adding areas of decorations, patterns, names and marks
Pictured below are a selection of the finished circles. Don't they look amazing?
It always intrigues me when I am working with children (and adults come to think of it), how despite everyone being given the same instructions, same mediums, same materials not one object looks like another. I think these circle represent the pupils very well, showing that we are all different, all unique, all have our different talents and are all beautiful.
So can you tell what we are making? Have a guess and let me know. When the work has all been completed I will post a picture on my blog.
Thanks for reading
