Welsh Lady Quilt Art inspired by Ruth Jen Evans

 Children were given a triangular piece of white paper and coloured in a Welsh lady with oil pastels. 

This was glued onto a square. I photocopied pieces of Welsh tapestry fabric to make a border. Displayed as a quilt. 

Wetlands

Marbled paper background.  Watercolour wetlands creatures observed on a recent school trip.

Printed buddleia leaves with watercolours butterflies and moths. 

 

Local Landmarks

 

The Gunpowder Plot

Firstly we marbled a piece of paper in fiery colours. A strip of black paper was used to draw a cityscape of Westminster. A yellow strip for Guy Fawkes in the cellar with the gunpowder. 

 

Nature Art

 

Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy, we studied leaves, feathers, pebbles and shells. 

Printed leaf background

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Squirrels

 Children in year 4 printed leaves for the background. When dry, they drew a squirrel using oil pastels. We read Brian Wildsmith's beautifully illustrated book.

  

Home tweet home

Another appliquéd tote bag

Stencil work

Firstly, the children chose a simple symbol. Our topic was Virtues, grateful and generous.

What are you grateful for?

They drew a simple design, then cut it out. They were asked to choose 2 colours. The first colour is printed onto white paper, then another colour is rolled onto the plate. The stencil is placed on top, then another monoprint is made. My very old wooden printing set was used for the lettering. 

The cut out stencils picked up the paint and were good enough to save to make a poster.

 

Wax resist

 Lent

Well, everything was cut short this year due to lockdown,  but we did manage to do some artwork for Lent

Reception children drew a simple cross with oil pastels, then painted lines across with watercolours. I encouraged them to do go,our mixing to get different tones and shades.

 Older children used more colours.

Display work, virtues.

Art club

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Lent

 Jesus went into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights

Year 1 tore strips of paper and stuck them onto a yellow background.  They separately drew Jesus on a white piece of paper. 

Sunflowers

 We grew our own sunflowers in school, then sent them home before they got too leggy or they wouldn't make it past the school yard!

Year 2

Firstly,  we printed a bit of yellow onto white paper for a little colour.

Then, the children observed a sunflower and made a pencilled line drawing.

We printed a real sunflower leaf here. Then put some detail on top.

With year 1 ...a different technique 

We printed the centre  with bubble wrap and brown ink onto brown packaging. The children drew petals and added bits of collage, fabric, paper, recycling...anything yellowy that  I could  find. 

When dry, we used bits of fabric for the background and the vase, to make our own Van Gogh! This is just laid out onto the carpet,  the children sat around and added their flower one at a time whilst listening to music. Lovely! 

In year 3, children used oil pastels to draw sunflowers onto brown paper bags. We made sunflower growing kits to sell. The bird feeders were made from the recycled milk cartons. 

Owls

OWLS year 1

Inspired by the book The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark

Oil pastels on black paper, the collaged onto blue paper. We looked at a variety of pictures of real owls and line drawings, emphasising the detailed lines and use of patterns and shape. Although some coloured in! Lol

 

Kandinsky Concentric Circles

We researched Kandindsky and his way of expressing himself through colour. Would you call yellow a mean colour? Well, a few surprises. 

I folded the white paper to create 6 squares, then the children used bright oil pastels to make the concentric circles (demonstration needed!) Afterwards they chose a bright coloured paint to sponge over the top...wax resist. 

An extra activity was to mix paint colours with black and white to make tints, tones and shades, into bookmarks, like the paint samples in DIY shops. The children wrote a word to describe their emotion and how that colour made them feel. 

 

Lion collage

Sometimes you just have to go with the flow...

I had planned something completely different, but the children in year 1 were eager to talk about their recent visit to the zoo. So quick change of plan, to lions. Collaged stripes for the manes.

 Child led activity! 😉

In year 2, they made lion masks

 

Energy Art

Nicholas Evans

ENERGY TOPIC YEAR 6

I chose to study the Welsh Artist, Nicholas Evans who depicts coal mining. My father once bought one of his paintings. 

The children used black paper with white oil pastels and white paper with black oil pastels. Big Pit was cut and collage with black paper onto marbled paper. We marbled orange and yellow paper. 

 

Bird Study.

Bird Week.

So again, I like to make the picture interesting, so have filled the background with a print. 

I introduced the children in year 4 to the artist, Mark Heard, noting his varied use of media and layers in his work.  As soon as I discovered his work, I felt very familiar with it. 

It's like creating a display in school. Think about colours, not too many, build the layers up. With children's pictures, I can't stand it when they just draw and colour in. There are so many techniques that could be used to fill the space. 

Using my gelli plate, with silver and blue acrylic paints, the children used leaves to create these positive and negative prints.

On a separate piece of white paper, using oil pastel  the children drew either a magpie, or a wood pigeon. These are birds that we see around our school, so they are familiar with them. 

I cut them out, mounted on black sugar paper and put the picture together, however, note to self...this takes too long, 60 children in the year group. 

                         I let them cut it out themselves now, even the younger ones. 

This made a lovely long term display.