Pop Art Emoji

The 1960s was our focus in Primary 3 for social studies but it would be impossible to understand the decade without its art - and, as a focus for our art lessons, the theme was full of interesting art concepts, techniques, and influential artists.

Tate Kids has a great video to help children understand the Pop Art movement, while this CBBC video introduces the ideas of Andy Warhol. We thought about how Pop Art reflects changes during the 1960s and represents popular culture. We then created Warhol-style prints which represent something from our own culture - emoji. The idea came from this blog.

We practised drawing our emoji before pressing it into a Styrofoam piece (one quarter of A4). I checked each stamp to make sure the lines had been pressed in deeply enough. For the next step, we divided A4 paper into quarters and used bright colours for the background. The printing was done with normal black tempera paint. The hardest part was getting not too much and not too little paint, then pressing down well enough (especially given the painted texture of the background). Once they had completed their picture, most continued printing and printing and printing...

Great Graffiti Art

Another project from our 1982 - 1998 exhibit. We explored the history of graffiti/street art, and its controversies (leading to some interesting debates and discursive writing - always good to have links across the curriculum!). More recent Banksy news also proved fascinating. We looked at a Powerpoint on the Smartboard and a cartoon about Banksy from the CBBC.

For the actual art, we focused on graffiti which would give a positive message. Children picked a quote and designed a stencil to accompany it. Once they had cut it out, they flicked paint over the stencil to create the 'graffiti'. The final touch was typing their chosen saying to stick around the picture. For better or worse, there was a class full of graffiti fans by the end of the project!

James Rizzi City!

Our school art exhibition was themed around artists from the last hundred years. Each class was given a particular time period and ours was 1982 - 1998.

To be honest, it took me a while to think of any well-known artists from the 80s and 90s but we ended up with many more potential projects than we had time for!

James Rizzi was one of the artists who fit in with our brief. I had actually never heard of him before stumbling across this lesson on Deep Space Sparkle (apparently he's most famous in America and Germany) but I decided his art was very cool and the kids thought so too.

After discussing his techniques, style and works of art, we used black oil pastels and paint to create Rizzi self-portraits and skyscrapers for a collaborative city scape display!

Creative Colour Wheels

We started this term by reviewing the elements of art and then focused on colour - especially the colour wheel!

 

After one lesson where everyone use paint, protractors, rulers and a bit of maths to make a 12-part colour wheel (with primary, secondary and tertiary colours), each child planned their own creative colour wheel project.

They were told to include either a large 12-part colour wheel or multiple 6-part colour wheels (with just primary and secondary colours), and to only use red, blue and yellow ready-mix paints for that part of their art. The rest of the picture was up to them!

The children were inspired by many things - from their hobbies to the recent election, minions to horses and carriages, the eye art we'd done before, examples I showed them from other blogs (like this arteascuola umbrella) or famous artists like Roy Lichtenstein! 

They also each made some word art to go with all the elements we discussed.

Muffins!!!

While baking doesn't often constitute an art lesson, my class always LOVE the opportunity to be creative in this way (and learn a lot in the process). Out of all the things we've tried, these muffins are one of the most successful.

The recipes are from Muffins Fast and Fantastic. Both the apple and ginger muffin group and the iced chocolate muffin makers were very proud of their results - delicious and nutritious :)

Colour Wheel Eyes

This is a wonderful lesson I tried a while back from the blog Splats, Scraps and Glue Blobs! I particularly liked it because it covered such a range of subjects, skills and knowledge.

We learned about colour theory and mixing primary, secondary and tertiary colours. I also introduced the children to the work of Rene Magritte and his surrealist eye.

As well as the art learning, this project fit in perfectly with our 'Light and Sight' science topic. It also provided a real opportunity to work with fractions and angles (dividing 360 degrees into twelfths).

I'd recommend a look at Splats, Scraps and Glue Blobs - my lesson was pretty similar. I've been working on colour wheels with my class again this week and they are very excited about coming up with their own colour wheel projects - from colour wheel wheels (i.e. for a vehicle) to colour wheel cakes or drum kits. I'm looking forward to the results!

Splatter Maps

This is another idea I found over at artisan des arts which I knew we'd have to try. These examples are from a while back when the class were learning about the Commonwealth - it was a great opportunity to revise some geography as well!

The children learned about positive and negative space, as well as improving cutting and painting skills and thinking about colour.

After cutting out a blank work map (see the link above for an example), we lightly glued the shapes on to white paper (this was the one time cheap glue sticks came in useful). They then used normal palette paints for stippling around all the edges and then more watery paint to splatter over the picture (definitely a popular technique!).

These looked fantastic up on display! Thanks to artisan des arts for another very clever idea.