Keep Calm and Paint the Queen

This week I had the pleasure of spending a day at Vange Primary School in Basildon to work with a group of 18 talented pupils from year 1 to year 6. Our mission was to complete a large canvas portrait of the Queen Elizabeth II using acrylic paint, felt material, tissue paper and anything else that came to mind.

Using ideas from my previous jubilee blogs - the ideology behind the piece was for the children to incorporate the style of four different artists to build up a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II:

Van Gogh, Mondrian, Lichtenstein and Klimt

The children explored brush strokes, layering paint, mark making, use of colour, collage and how to interpret other artists work.

In previous workshops I have had to tackle how to keep a small group of children engaged at one time whilst working on the same piece of artwork. To produce a piece of work that the children can be proud of it is often better to work with a small group at one time. For this project I decided to use two canvases that would provide the opportunity for the painting to be split with two groups working on one piece at a time.

Outline drawing of the Queen ready for painting

The first group of children start to put a Mondrian twist on the lower half of the portrait,
painting bold blocks of primary colours

The next artist's style we add to the portrait is the pop art styling of Roy  Lichtenstein
using dots, strips and bold flat colour

 

The children decide to paint the Queens jewel in the royal red, white and blue

We could not decide what to do with the frame for the picture and was unsure of what colours to use. One of the children said it was so hot that they would like some ice-cream, in fact Neapolitan ice-cream. With that the children decided to create a Neapolitan ice-cream themed frame to the piece using cut up squares of tissue paper

Half way through the painting

Van Goghs' swirls and impressionist brush strokes were chosen to portray the Queens hair

And last but by no means least the metallic glittering patterns and jewel like artwork of Klimt was used to create a sparkling crown fit for our Jubilee Queen. For additional sparkle glitter was added

Whilst waiting for the paint to dry the children made jubilee rosette out of felt material.
These were glued using pva glue around the frame

The finished product, a portrait of the Queen referencing 4 different artists with very different styles. 

Arty Queen Portrait

Day Three of the Jubilee art brings you a fun activity where children have the opportunity to research and learn about four different artists -Arty Queen Portrait

Key Skills: Shape,colour, form, research

Materials:Picture of the Queen, Images of Vincent Van Gogh, Roy Lichtenstein, PierMondrian and Gustav Klimt’s work, pencil, rubber, cartridge paper, medium towork in such as pencils, crayon or paint

Vocab : Boldcolour, texture, use of line, pattern, Great Masters, brush stroke

 

LearningObjectives :

To use an internet search engine to resource images

To learn about the work of the artists - VincentVan Gogh, Roy Lichtenstein, Pier Mondrian and Gustav Klimt

To apply knowledge of the artists work listed aboveto individual work

To develop drawing and painting skills

To complete a portrait of the Queen in the style offour different artists

Process:

Step 1: Research your artists. For my portrait I have decided to lookat the bold blocks of colour by Pier Mondrian, the dots and dashes of RoyLichtenstein, the wavy, subtle brush strokes of Vincent Van Gogh and thestunning pattern work in Gustav Klimt’s work.

Klimt's amazing pattern work

The pop art styling of Roy Lichtenstein

The bold colours of Mondrian

The amazing brushwork of Van Gogh

Step2: Once you have decided on your artists, you need to draw an outline of theQueens head. You could also try this technique with other London iconic imagessuch as the Beefeaters, ravens, lions etc.

Step 3: You need to decide which artists style youwant to apply to which part of the portrait. Once you have done this you areready to start.

Step 4: I have chosen to work in pastels and pencilfor my portrait but you can work in any medium for this project and on anysurface. You could use paint on a canvas, paint on wood or even create thepiece using felt material – you are only limited by your imagination and thematerials you have available.

Step5: I chose to start with Mondrian at the bottom of the portrait, colouring insections of bold colour using oil pastels.

  

Step 6: For the face of the Queen I decide to usethe dot work on Lichtenstein. I coloured in the bold sections with pastels andthe dots with pencil.

Step7: For the Queens hair I use oil pastels and pencils creating the wavy subtlelines that Vincent Van Gogh uses in his artwork. I have used three differentcolours to help create texture within the hair.

  

Step8: Finally, for the crown I decided to use the stunning glittering pattern workof Klimt. I looked carefully at the pattern work he used in his art work andreplicated shapes and patterns across the crown in pencil.

 

Step9: For a final touch I cut the excess from around the portrait and mounted theimage onto black card.

  

Differentiation:

Key Stage 1: For Key stage 1 pupils four artistsmay be a bit overwhelming. It might be more productive to limit this to one-twoartists

.

Key Stage 2: Key stage 2 pupils could select twoartists that they have researched for a couple of sections of the portrait. Forthe remaining two sections the children can come up with their own styles andpatterns. Once again think about what other images this can be applied to aswell as the Queens portrait.

Don't for get to send me your pictures and I will put the best ones on a blog lisamart@hotmatil.co.uk