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!

Onomatopoeia Art

This is an idea I've seen on a couple of blogs but I saw it first on Artisan des Arts. It was particularly perfect as we're studying onomatopoeia in language, 1960s in history and Pop Art in art!

After some language work each child chose one example of onomatopoeia for their art. They had to think about what style of writing would suit the word, draw it and colour it in a single colour using felt-tipped pen. The second stage was covering a piece of paper with cut out newspaper. Pupils were encouraged to use columns and paragraphs to guide their cutting and to overlap the newspaper in all different directions. Thirdly, they drew some kind of explosion or cloud shape on the back of the newspaper sheet and cut it out. They stuck the shape on a piece of coloured paper and then cut it out again leaving a border. Finally, they stuck down the shape and word (which they had also cut out - this project was great for scissor control!) onto another sheet of coloured paper and outlined the word in black.

I love the way these are turning out and there are still a lot of really creative ones still to be finished.

Work in Progress

A week ago we started our Op Art mural and it is still work in progress. We had discussed Op Art before Easter (and during a visit to a modern art gallery) so we just had a brief review of the style and talked about the use of line and colour before the colouring began. Everyone in the class has coloured at least a couple of 'squares' so far.

I first saw the idea on Artisan des Arts (which also linked to another post) and used the advice to create this project. I stuck together some large sheets of paper and drew the design. Pupils have been colouring alternate boxes (which I'd marked with a small 'x') and have just started to colour the remaining boxes black. We all liked how it looked without the black but adding it does help to cover up any mistakes as well as make the design stand out.

We're really enjoying having this project on the go and I would definitely try it again - it would be fun to try out other Op Art designs. I would also get pupils more involved in drawing out the design. I'll post the final results when we're done!