Dulwich Picture Gallery

Yesterday we had a fantastic day at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Following a lovely sunny walk through the park, we arrived at the gallery to learn about Ancient Greek art.

We looked at some beautiful paintings by Poussin, which were painted in the 17th Century, but were in the style of Roman and Ancient Greek paintings. We each chose a detail from one of the paintings to draw.

We took our drawings back to the studio, where we used egg tempera paint to complete our artwork in the style of the Ancient Greeks. Ben told us that the Ancient Greeks thought that there were 4 primary colours, can you remember what they were?

Our paintings had to be completed using only these four colours, which was quite tricky and involved lots of concentration to mix the colours we needed.

The exciting part of the morning was making our own paint! We discovered that Ancient painters found their colours in plants, rocks, rust and even burnt mummies! Some children were asked to use a pestle and mortar to crunch up charcoal into powder, then some other children spread the colour onto glass tiles. Then things got a bit slimy, as we had to break and separate eggs, so that we could pop the yolk to use to bind our paint together.

 

It was another wonderful trip to Dulwich Picture Gallery! What did you think? What did you enjoy? Can you remember what those four primary colours in Ancient Greece were?