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.

Sailing

We drew these pictures from photographs of local sail boats. Perhaps another time we could draw them in person but using photos meant children could focus on observational drawing skills without worrying too much about the composition of their pictures.

We started by sketching the main contour lines, adding more detail, then shading with coloured pencil.

Drawing Compasses

More on the seafaring theme! This time a lesson taken pretty much straight from artisan des arts.

This lesson was ideal because we'd been working on observational drawings and reading about navigation in Kensuke's Kingdom (also good timing as I'd just rescued some out-of-date atlases!).

The children drew their pictures in pencil from images of old, decorative compasses (in some cases elaborating or simplifying slightly). The were allowed to use a pair of compasses at the start but most of the drawing was free hand. The original lesson used metallic paints to finish the drawings but we just used coloured pencil and black pen.

The children then picked a map to rip out for the background (they were very specific in their choice of locations!) and stuck on their compass - no other mounting needed.

This was a straightforward but highly satisfying lesson with great result - I'd recommend a look at the original inspiration.

Jellyfish

After seeing some amazing deep sea creatures in our science lessons, it seemed fitting to use them as inspiration for art! I decided to use the idea of chalk/pastel translucent jellyfish which I'd seen in a couple of pictures on-line (such as the lesson in this post).

We discussed how we could create tone by blending coloured and white chalk on the black paper. I was glad I'd asked them to practise on some scrap pieces first as jellyfish shapes and blending turned out to be more challenging than I'd anticipated...but challenge is good so that was fine!

Once the children had finished their jellyfish composition using the chalk, they splattered the background with white paint (perhaps a little over-enthusiastically in some cases) to represent the bubbles and 'marine snow' in the deep sea habitat.