Winter Trees

This post is going back to December again... We decided to create a 'winter tree' display in school so I decided to have a go at the 'winter birch tree' lesson I'd seen popping up all over the internet! I particularly liked the instructions and wonderful examples on 'A Faithful Attempt'.

After the first lesson I have to admit I was quite worried as, in spite of practising on scrap paper first, I was seeing rather interesting green stripy skies and bits of art that looked more like some kind of African pattern or animal print than a winter scene. I hadn't anticipated the blending for the sky being quite that tricky! In the end though, the paintings looked great.

One thing I can't understand though...whenever I try the 'salt effect' (putting salt on to wet paint), nothing happens! Maybe I use the wrong kind of paint or salt or just do it wrong. Oh well, it would have looked good in these pictures if I could work it out!

Nutcrackers

As we were busy preparing dances for a whole school performance of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker before Christmas, a bit of nutcracker art and writing fit in perfectly.

As well as inspiration from our nutcracker work in school, I looked at the nutcracker art lesson from the Georgetown Elementary art blog and especially liked the idea of linking the lesson to figure drawing - something which we'd practised earlier in the year. Nutcracker drawing turned out to be rather easier than figure drawing, probably because they don't actually need to look like real people...

We drew the nutcrackers in pencil and coloured in crayon. A couple of things which really helped the kids to draw the nutcrackers were: 1. The idea (from Art Projects for Kids) of folding the paper lightly in half so that the nutcracker's 'hips' are half way down the page; 2. Drawing the hips first - if they got that part to be a reasonably size, the rest came more easily.  

Planet-esque Christmas Cards

Well before Christmas we designed cards to send off for professional printing. The idea for our card design came from the smART Class blog.

Children chose either brown or black paper for the background - both turned out well, although brown was more effective on the printed cards.

We started by drawing the branches, layering lighter and darker green and brown oil pastel.


For the ornaments, we sketched shapes on to a separate sheet of white paper. We coloured using oil pastel, with white and black to add highlights and shadows. Adding tone to the baubles reminded us of the planet pictures we made last year!

If pupils wanted to add a lot of patterns to their baubles, they drew the patterns in fine black pen, coloured with felt tips and then added the highlights and shadows as normal.


The completed ornaments were cut out and stuck on the branches.

As a finishing touch we used watered down white paint to splatter over the whole picture - always a popular technique!

Everyone was pleased with their pictures and their cards, plus it was a good chance to review the concept of tone. Thank you to the smART class blog for such super inspiration!

Op-Art Stars

One of the few activities I can remember from primary school had something to do with joining points on an axis to make a cool sort of pattern. I'm not sure what the intended relevance of this activity was to anything but I wanted to try it with my own pupils. After a fruitless internet search for 'drawing lines to make a cool pattern', I decided to use my memory as an inspiration for an activity of my own.

The activity I came up with was the 'Op Art Christmas Star'. Rather than just drawing a cool pattern, it could be used to learn about a style of art, use of line, shading and other things too.

1. Start with a cross - e.g. 20 cm by 20 cm, intersecting at the centre point.

2. Mark each centimetre along the lines - right to the end of the line.

3. The next bit is hard to explain in words but quite simple in practice. Draw lines in one quadrant at a time.

Draw a line from the point furthest from the centre on the vertical line to the point closest to the centre on the horizontal line.

In this example I would go 10 to 1, 9 to 2, 8 to 3, 7 to 4, 6 to 5, 5 to 6, 4 to 7, 3 to 8, 2 to 9, 1 to 10.

4. Depending on how you want the stars to look, you could go over the lines with a fine black pen and shade the boxes - perhaps getting lighter towards the centre. It also looks great drawn with metallic pens on black paper. Whatever really!

I'm looking forward to trying it out properly with the class as we ran out of time!

Sewing - a Surprise Success!

Last year some of the kids in my class had a go at 'sewing' with special kits, complete with felt shapes with holes and large plastic needles.

Most children found that craft very challenging but I still wanted to try 'real' sewing with them this year. The simple Christmas tree idea from Angela Anderson's art blog was just what I had in mind.

I gave out paper triangles which the children traced on to scraps of fabric. Using basic stitching, they sewed up the two longer sides. Before completing the bottom of the tree, they filled the decoration with stuffing and glued a rectangle of felt on to the inside for the tree trunk. After stitching up the bottom of the tree, we added shiny stars and thread for hanging, and cut the edges with pinking shears to prevent fraying.

Using small sharp needles on normal fabric seemed to actually be easier for my class than the felt sewing kit. I think it was more inspiring for them too. Even the boys were going home and sewing decorations of their own!

Tints and Shades

As everyone had been following the Olympics, we started on sport-themed silhouette pictures. This week we talked about tints and shades and painted backgrounds. Later they will paint a silhouette of someone doing sport on top.

I have to admit, since I started browsing art blogs, the number of original art lessons I've taught has definitely decreased - there are so many good ideas out there I want to try! The tints and shades background is no exception. I can't remember where I first saw an example but 'The Bees Knees Cousin' recently posted helpful instructions. I was surprised how challenging this activity was for my class (and that it took the whole afternoon). They especially found it hard not to get too dark too quickly. I think the backgrounds turned out well in the end though!

Back to School!

This seemed perfect for the first day back - an activity which involves pupils' names and no paint! (Helpful for a first day back in a classroom with no sink.)

I'd seen the idea on a few blogs and  the instructions on artisan des arts were particularly helpful  - complete with pictures for each step. I started writing my own instructions for this post but really it's just better to follow the link!

A week later most pictures are finished and look fantastic hung across the room. It was also interesting to see how the children all managed - some found it really tricky! Some started out with crooked triangles, others struggled to draw letters the right size and position... I don't like to do things for them but perhaps in this case I should have helped more to get them off to a good start. It's hard to know!