Art Club Project #2 - Oil Pastel Skylines

Today was the second week of our art club with my year 3s and 4s. I saw a picture on pinterest that was a lovely skyline created by blending oil pastels (the picture didn't link to a blog so let me know who to credit if you know!)  I tried coming up with my own lesson and I think they came out quite well. These are the steps that we followed:

Start by drawing a basic skyline on white card using a ruler.

Cut this out and then you are left with a stencil like this:

Place the stencil towards the top of your black sugar paper. Go over each of the buildings with a different colour oil patel. Blend the colour as you go, making sure you always do this in the same direction to get the desired effect. Make sure you leave space for a moon!

Move the stencil down and continue to build your skyline. Try to move the stencil to the left and right so that each level of your skyline is slightly different. Continue to use bright colours and blend in the same direction.

Make sure that you don't put your stencil over a line that you have already draw for an edge of a building. This will cause one of your buildings to have a big line through it which ruins the effect.

Once you're satisfied with your skyline, use white and yellow oil pastels to add lights in the windows of the buildings. Then use the same pastels to create your moon as shown below:

This project proved to be slightly tricky for some of the children as they were tempted to just draw line for their buildings. I needed to keep reminding them to blend and smudge their lines to give the impression of many coloured lights like a city glow. Here are some examples below from my 8 and 9-year-olds:

Great effort everyone. All of these techniques are very new to us all but we're giving it our best shot. They can't wait to take all their work home to show off at the end of the year.

Apologies once more for my awful camerawork. Need to sort out how to get clear pictures uploaded!
DB.

Class Art- Africa

We've started a new unit recently in our art lessons looking at Africa. I thought I'd post some of the work from a recent lesson. We started by looking at a similar picture to this of a lion and we discussed how to use our pencils to make darker and lighter lines to add tone and realism.

I modeled for the class on the board and showed how using blending will help and reminded them to  make sure that they highlight the darker areas.

Here are some examples of the children's work below. They did a great job considering they were quite far out of their comfort zone.

 Very good effort, 3B. We showed many examples of these and of our African patterns in our assembly. We received many compliments for our good learning.

My next post for the normal class will be to show some of our savannah work with silhouettes. They're looking great so far but need another week to finish.

DB.

Art Club Project #1- The outcome!

As I posted previously, I did a lesson on making silhouettes using masking tape and oil pastels. The page for this and for the instructions can be found here and the inspiration can be found here.

This was the first project with my art club for years 3 and 4 and I have to say how impressed I am with them. It was only a one hour session and it's very different from anything we've done before in lessons.

 

 

Excellent job art club. Bring on the next one!

DB.

Monster Bookmarks

Played around with these over the weekend when looking for future activities for the art club. They're really easy and you can easily add your own extra details and designs. I'll post step by steps if requested or if I do them with the club.

Tree Classroom Display

Put this together earlier in the year on our classroom door. Each child was given an autumn leaf in red, yellow or orange. They wrote down all the things that they love about our school as well as their own ideas about what makes the perfect school. Some of the ideas were great and it's resulted in quite a popular display.

Art Club Project #1- Silhouette masking tape

This project is a combination of a few ideas that I came across on Pinterest but the main idea is here. I wanted something that could be done in a one hour session that also wasn't too difficult as I wasn't sure about the general ability of the group.

Materials
- Thick cartridge paper
- Masking tape
- Watercolours
- Black marker
- Scissors
- Oil pastels

Firstly, you need to take your paper and place it onto newspaper or some sort of protection for the table. Take the masking tape and apply a few strip across the page in whatever shape or pattern you prefer. Some of the class went for 6 even squares and others did a kind of union jack, whatever patterns is fine. If you look closely you'll be able to see the tape stuck on in my example below.

The next step is to paint each section with a different watercolour. I told my class to try not to put different shades of the same colour next to each other. We used watercolour because it dries quickly and I think these came out better than my attempt with poster paint.

The next stage is to print out a side profile of yourself. I took the side profile pictures of my class and printed them out before the club. You need to cut around your profile and then colour it all in completely with a black marker. Once you have finished colouring it in your watercolour should have dried. Carefully peel off the masking tape and that will reveal perfect white lines between your sections.

 Once all the tape is off, stick your side profile silhouette to your masking tape sections.

Use the black marker to write words that describe you or things you like in each different section. Use oil pastels to decorate each section with fun, wavy lines and designs. I told the class to use a colour wheel to help them find a complementary colour.

And there you have it. I will post the results from some of the children in the club over the next few days. They came out beautifully and I'm incredibly impressed.

DB.

Trying Something New

Hello!

I am a newly qualified primary school teacher who loves art lessons and being a bit creative. I currently teach Year 3 children (aged 8) and run an after-school art club for children aged 8 and 9.

This blog is basically somewhere I can put pictures of projects that I do with step-by-step instructions so that I remember them. There will be posts with examples of projects:
- that I do with my normal class in art lessons
- that I do in my after-school club
- that I experiment with at home in an effort to find suitable activities for school.

By no means am I some kind of amazing artist (as you will be able to tell) but I love artistic things and that's what really matters. By following simple rules and drawing some basic patterns even the most adamant I-can't-do-art person can create something worth keeping.

Parents may even eventually come on here to check out the work that their children have been doing and hopefully others can look here and try out some of these activities at home. A lot of the things I do are as a result of hours upon hours of browsing Pinterest and reading art skill books and picking and choosing what I think works well together.

Fingers crossed I actually keep this up. There will hopefully be lots of beautiful work to be displayed.

I'll leave this first post with a picture of some of the projects I'm hoping to do with my club.

DB.