Amazing Artwork!

On Friday afternoon, for our last big art project together, we created a massive masterpiece!

After coming up with lots of nouns, we picked three that were unrelated. The three nouns we chose were: 'fireworks', 'battle' and 'flowers'.

We worked together, as a whole class, to draw an image that combined all three of these things. We had to fill the whole piece of paper:

Next, we were given colourful paints, but we weren't allowed to mix them and if we wanted to use a new colour, we had to swap with someone else. This was tricky at first, but we soon got the hang  of it!

Finally, we added the highlights and shadows with black and white paint, which again, we could not mix:

Here is our finished piece:

Can you think of a suitably marvellous title for our masterpiece?

Dulwich Picture Gallery!

On Friday, we had a lovely sunny morning at Dulwich Picture Gallery!

After a very pleasant stroll through the park, we arrived in time for a quick play in the gardens in the sunshine.

Our workshop was linked to our topic at school- so we were experimenting with ways to represent water and rivers.

We used mixed media (what did Jo tell us 'medium' meant in Art?) to create beautiful ink, wax and salt creations to show water and how it reflects light and the sky.

Next, we looked at some woodcut prints by Astrup to inspire our own block printing. We designed a natural landscape and carved it into polystyrene tiles, then printed them above our rivers, to create a mixed media landscape image.

We enjoyed using the printing press again and our skills at printing and painting have really improved!

Here are some great examples of finished pieces:

 Finally, we were able to have a quick walk through the special exhibition of Astrup's work and see some of his impressive woodcut prints, the woodcut blocks themselves and some spectacular landscape paintings.

Source: Dulwich Picture Gallery

Beautiful Artwork!

Last week, we learned all about the power of observation in Art. We looked closely at our hands and focused on drawing then painting what we could actually see, rather than what we thought our hands should look like.

We noted the shape and length of our fingers, the lines on our hands, the variety of colours (particularly noticing that no one's hands are all one colour!) and the areas of our hands that were hit by light or had darker shadows.

We spotted many colours in our skintones; blues, purples, greens, yellows and reds. We spent a long time mixing and blending colours and showing where the highlights and shadows on our hands were.

 The most effective final pieces were made by children who had really taken the time to look closely, rather than drawing and painting what they thought a hand 'should' look like. Great work!

An Underwater Adventure

Continuing our oceanic theme this week, we worked together yesterday afternoon to produce some HUGE paintings...

We covered our classroom floor with plastic sheets and taped down some very large pieces of paper. Then we split into two teams to design a large underwater painting. Each group was asked to work together to create an image of life under the sea.

Firstly, the groups drew their ideas out:

Then, we mixed the colours we needed and began to paint...

Here are the marvellous finished pieces:

Finally, the paintings were hung up to dry!

Beautiful Egyptian Silhouettes

 
Yesterday, we made some beautiful Ancient Egyptian themed artwork.

Firstly, we learned what a 'wash' is and how to make one. We used inks to make these beautiful backgrounds, as they blend so smoothly and give really strong colours.

Once the backgrounds were complete, we designed our silhouette foregrounds. We wanted to set them in Egypt, so most of the children chose to include an iconic pyramid and many included a camel or a palm tree.

After we had carefully designed the silhouettes, we cut them out and stuck them onto our backgrounds.

A Class Painting

For the last few weeks, we have been planning and designing a large piece of artwork as a class. We have been learning about the 'Mother of the Notting Hill Carnival'; Claudia Jones. She was an incredible woman who fought for equal rights for women and for people of all races. We have learnt about her amazing work in the USA and in London.

We decided to create a portrait of Claudia Jones in the style of the illustrations of our Cuban class book, 'The Girl Who Spun Gold'. We looked closely at the patterns and colours used by the illustrators Leo and Diane Dillon, then tried to include them in our designs.

Source: Leo and Diane Dillon, Blue Sky Press

Last week we divided the portrait into sections and each group drew the patterns onto their part of the picture.

Yesterday, each group mixed their paint to create the colours they needed, then we started to paint the portrait.

Next week, we will add the finishing touches!