Art Topic Summaries

Nursery Cycle 2, Autumn 2 — ART

We focused on a range of books based around colour such as Elmer and the Rainbow, The Colour Monster and The Mixed-Up Chameleon.

We used a range of coloured resources to sort, match and count how many. We explored different ‘shades’ of colours, realising that not all of our objects were all the exact colour. This lead to discussions around rainbows, and what ‘indigo’ looked like.

We then created our own rainbow, using a range of resources.

Children visited Billingham Forum to watch a show based on our Key Author, Eric Carle. The Very Hungry Caterpillar provided lots of discussions based on colours we could see, especially when he turned into a beautiful butterfly!

We used a wide range of resources both inside and outside to explore colour and to experiment with our mark making.

Our Key Artist Frank Bowling uses lots of colour and texture to create his pieces of Art. We were inspired to try to copy his style and created a range of textured and colourful art pieces.

In the Autumn term, we have explored a range of materials, resources and tools. We have used these resources in different ways to express our ideas, thoughts and feelings.

Play sand + fingers

Reception Autumn

=  

1 picture of ‘me’,

additional opportunities to develop fine motor skills. 

ability to articulate ideas.

“I need to cut this bit out so I can stick it on to my other picture.”

We can create closed shapes with continuous lines and use these shapes to represent objects.

Developing precision and accuracy with one-handed tools such as scissors.

Our Key Artist is Andy Goldsworthy. We looked at lots of different examples of his work. We visited the forest and selected lots of different natural resources for our own masterpieces.

What do you think?

Refining artistic effects to express ideas…

“I’m just using circles. So look. Big circles, then I’m using little circles to put on top. I’m trying to put 4 on top. They look like cakes!”

Exploring materials freely developing ideas of what to make.

Year 1 Summer 1 Key Artist - Vincent Van Gogh & Sunflowers A very special book arrived in Y1. It was a fantastic story about a boy called Camille and the impact he had on the famous painter/artist ‘Vincent van Gogh’. We explored Vincent’s paintings and learned about his life and death.

First we learned how to mix colours. We used watercolour paints and darkened our colours each time.

Then we studied the famous sunflower painting, we looked closely at real sunflowers and discussed the petal shapes and overlapping. We carefully drew a single sunflower using darker and lighter lines to show light.

We put on our overalls and were introduced to acrylic paints!

This painting is Vincent’s most famous. We talked about how the colours reflected Vincent’s mood and recreated a sunflower painting in the style of Vincent. We were introduced to acrylic paints and a palette to mix with.

We looked closely at the 43 self-portraits of Vincent. We talked about his mood and feelings during the portraits. Finally we had a go at drawing and colouring ourselves using soft pastels.

Colour washing our backgrounds with watercolours!

We sculpted air drying clay into mini sunflower bowls and painted them using bright acrylic paint.

We mixed colours on our paint palette just like Vincent did. We added texture to our painting with thick paint.

Look at our creations!

Our next challenge was to draw and paint on acetate to create a stained glass window sunflower. We used thick brushes and heavy brushstrokes to layer the paint over our outline.

Year 2 Spring Formal Elements of Art and topic work We began by looking at repeating patterns, both man-made and natural. We discussed the use of colours, shapes, tones and lines We had a go at making our own repeating patterns using objects from around the classroom dipped in paint. We also experimented with overprinting, Our next challenge was to use what we had learnt about using the pastels to help us create a picture of the Northern Lights, trying to recreate the shapes, tones and colours that we saw. We also created a silhouette using black card—this was quite tricky! We practised our techniques further with our ‘March of the Penguin’ pieces of art.

Next we learnt how to use pastels and crayons to take rubbings of different objects and materials. We talked about the effects created by the different textures, Then we used our rubbings to create a picture—this is a technique called frottage that was developed by artist Max Ernst.

‘The Entire City’ by Max Ernst (1934)

Finally we explored Aborignal artwork from Australia and learnt about using traditional ochre for these paintings. We learnt about animals that live in Australia and used paint and cotton buds to make some Aborignal style artwork.

The children began this topic by researching the work of DanielJean Baptise, a Caribbean silk painter from Saint Lucia.

Children looked at his work and analysed it, using key questions as a basis.

Year 4 Autumn 2 Daniel-Jean Baptiste Children the choose some of their favourite works by Baptiste and had a go at recreating them in their sketchbooks, using his signature vibrant colours. Annotating their work as they went along.

We then looked more closely at his work in which Baptiste zooms in and focuses on one specific area of a plant, animal or landscape. The children then used their ipads to have a go at creating their own zoomed in image.

Finally, the children had a go at their own silk paintings, creating their own Christmas cards to take home to their families.

After studying the work of Baptiste, the children then created their own Baptiste inspired artwork, choosing a rainforest animal as their subject. They used pastels to create the deep, vibrant colours Baptiste uses in his work.

Children use sweet wrappers to firstly sketch a basic outline of each to get the layout and proportions right and then adding the detail of the lettering, shapes and illustrations before colouring it in carefully using coloured pencils.

Year 5 Autumn 1 Art and Design Skills The children drew a portrait of Michael Rosen using just one continuous line, then referring to his poem ‘Chocolate’, wrote over the lines, creatively varying the size and style of their writing to suit the details of the picture.

Children then traced a section of the collage they drew and then scaled it up by copying the contents of each tracing paper square onto a corresponding square on an A3 grid before painting it.

The children create their own Greek pots using clay linked to their ’Ancient Greece’ topic.

Next we look at the life and work of our Key artist—William Morris. We decide what we like about his work and produce some of our own wallpaper designs.

Year 6 Autumn 1 William Morrris We looked at portraits through our Victorian topic and then drew our own portraits by copying the other half of our photographs

Finally we used zentangles to print some William Morris designs using polystyrene tiles and paint. The children had to carve a pattern into the tile and then dipped it into paint. They found ways of improving their designs and changing the amount or colour of the paint.

William Morris We looked at Zentangles to help prepare for printing. The children did repeated small patterns using

Year 6 Autumn 2 Landscapes We looked at Landscapes through our topic on Scotland. We experimented with colours used in the different paintings and then used these colours in our own landscapes.

We also discussed our likes and dislikes about various paintings.

We practices sketching a dragon eye using pencil and then moved to colour. We looked at different examples and tried to copy the techniques used. Finally we made our own dragon eye using clay. We experimented with different tools and produced scales by using a range of patterns.