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In our art lesson, year 5 have been learning all about Da Vinci, who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. We used our research skills to find out about Da Vinci’s achievements: learning some names of his famous drawings and sculptures. In this lesson, the children explored Da Vinci’s techniques using out shading and sketching skills.
Here are some of our final designs:
This morning the Green Group did some fantastic snowman drawings after getting caught in the snow on the way to school.
Year 6 recently had the fortune of working with local artist, Charlotte Eldred.
We began our session by looking at some of Charlotte’s work and learning about her style and doodling. Charlotte spoke to us about what it was like being an artist and what inspired her to do it.
We began the session by exploring pattern, concentrating on putting our pens to paper and thinking of as many different patterns as we could. We also took inspiration from the world around us – just like artists do. We noticed our display boards had wavy borders and we had a bricked effect on some of them – this inspired us to explore these patterns on our paper. After a few minutes, we had full pages of different patter line drawings. We then used these in the next part of the workshop.
Charlotte then spoke to us about the famous artist, Banksy. We have been studying Banksy and his style of graffiti artwork in our art lessons this term.
We looked at 2 of Banksy’s pieces: The Girl with the Balloon and the Wildstyle Cow. We didn’t know that Banksy had (controversially) graffitied on real cows too!
We discussed the different interpretations of the pieces of art. Some of us thought that the girl with the balloon represented something that was just out of reach and feelings of frustration. Some of us felt that it represented loss and sadness in letting go of something or someone you love. Some of us thought it represented hope and showed that your dreams are always within reach, you just need to push yourself to achieve them. We had some great discussions both within and after the lesson. The beauty of art is that there are no right or wrong answers!
Charlotte then spoke to us about how artists can take inspiration from other artists. She showed us how we could be inspired by and draw on Banksy’s artwork, and her style of art, to create our own versions.
Charlotte helped us to think about how we could begin our drawings but we discussed how everyone’s interpretations of art are different. We spoke about how art is a medium for expression and how we can express feelings/emotions through our creativity. We thought carefully about which of the patterns we had explored earlier in the lesson could represent the feelings we wanted to get across. Linear stripes could suggest that our thoughts were clear and calm whereas spirals and scribbles could suggest that we were confused or had a lot going on in our lives. We tried to express ourselves in our artwork: some of us gave our cows more pointed angles whereas some of use used softer curved lines; some of us drew heart-shaped balloons and filled them with patterns that represented hope and love; some of us drew more pointed balloons filled with patterns that represented more negative feelings of loss or anger. We also thought carefully about the facial expressions on our cows and of the girl/boy with the balloon.
Overall, we all had a fantastic workshop and learned a lot!
Thank you Charlotte!
As we are learning about London in Geography and History, we chose to create a Julian Opie style portrait of Queen Elizabeth. We then worked on our colour mixing skills to fill the portrait with simple colours. We explored mark making techniques with a pencil which could be used to add texture and then applied these textured marks to our watercolour portrait to add depth and detail.
Year 2 were incredibly lucky this week to have a visit from local artist Charlotte Eldred.
Charlotte told us all about her job as an artist and about the art she creates as well as all the amazing people she has taught.
Charlotte knew Year 2 were looking at the work of Julian Opie and she created a fantastic bespoke lesson for us based on his artworks.
We began by having a doodle session. Charlotte told us how this can help us feel calm. We used black pens and created lots of different patterns. Our doodles included lines, swirls, circles, zig zags, dots and dashes to name a few. We kept using different patterns until our paper was filled.
We then moved onto creating our own characters with our pens plain paper.
Charlotte helped us create characters step by step. We started with a round face before we added detail such as hair and facial features. We were able to draw on our own artistic skills that we have been practising when we have created self portraits.
We followed Charlotte’s instructions really well and created different characters, some with long hair and big noses, others with short hair and small eyes. We really loved being artistic and creating work we were proud of.
We loved our session with Charlotte and spent time afterwards looking at her website and all the amazing artwork she has created. We can’t wait to use the skills Charlotte has taught us and create some of our own doodles and artwork.
Connor had great fun today with our bubble machine. He tried to pop them and enjoyed chasing them around.
All the children danced around and we counted all the ones we popped.
Our machine made us all happy today and we cant wait for it to be back on tomorrow.
As Artists this week, we were trying to recreate Julian Opie’s simplicity and line drawing techniques within a sculpture.
We looked at his self portrait and discussed the lines and shapes that we needed to represent this image in clay. We manipulated the clay with our fingers and used the tools to craft and add details.
We loved wearing the aprons and getting stuck in with this messy material. What do you think to our masterpieces?
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Today we looked at who Henri Matisse is and his art work. Some of his art work that we looked at were ‘The open window’, ‘Women in a purple coat’ and ‘The goldfish’. Then we focused on his art work called ‘The snail’. Once we discussed them we make some of our own representations of ‘The snail’ as well as creating our own pieces of art work and named them. We cut up and stuck on different shapes and colours to create our art.
Every year , Children’s Mental Health Week takes place during February. This year the theme is,
‘ Let’s connect’.
Connecting with others helps us to share experiences with people we trust and care about. Positive relationships give us opportunities to share our feelings and get someone else’s views on what we are experiencing. Positive relationships give us a sense of feeling and belonging.
The BIG QUESTIONS:
What is mental health?
How can we look after our own mental health?
How can we look after the mental health
of others ?
What can we do to keep our minds healthy?
After lengthy discussions the children were asked to come up with a Mental Health Action Plan…
And when all the hard work is done – chill time – with a purpose!
Colouring is a healthy way to relieve stress. It calms the brain and helps your body relax. This can improve sleep and fatigue while decreasing body aches, heart rate, respiration, and feelings of depression and anxiety.
A perfect way to end the day.
