Bulldogs with normal class

Some of the class had seen our art club work on the walls and had mentioned how they'd like to give the drawing a go, so we gave it a shot a couple of days ago when we had a gap after lunch. We didn't do the complicated pointillism and background that we did in the art club project. Instead, we did the checkerboard background following the same instructions as the one used in this activity.

We followed the same instructions as here for the bulldog and then attempted to use three harmonious colours for the background. Some of the class got their colours slightly muddled but the results were still impressive considering the short amount of time and that the majority are not in art club.

DB.

Art Club Project #3- British Bulldogs

Welcome back to some more amazing work from the art club. I continue to be so incredibly impressed by these young pupils and it's a shame we're pretty much halfway through our time together before the end of the year. This project has taken us a couple of 1 hour sessions. I found these really helpful step-by-step instructions for a draw along bulldog on smART class. Being a school in England, we're obviously familiar with the phrase "British Bulldog" so I decided to attempt to put a project together.

1. For the first lesson, we followed the instructions whilst I modeled on the board in pencil and we then traced our work in a black marker which gave us something like this:

 2. I decided that I wanted to do a union jack background to reflect the "British Bulldog" theme. I gave the children an A4 sized printout of the flag with very faint lines. I can make this downloadable if requested. It looks like this:

3. Rather than just do fun art activities in the club, I do try to teach about different styles and methods. We opted for pointillism as it's something new for them and provides a good final product. They went over the faint lines with dots in black marker:

4. We then also learnt about the colour wheel and how to find complementary colours. Students were asked to replace the red and blue with complementary colours but to leave the usual white parts as white. I went for purple and yellow, still using the pointillism method:

5. We then went back to our bulldog and cut it out. Using the same complementary colours, we made small colourful additions to add our own accents:

6. Pupils could then choose where to place their bulldog: left, right or centre:

And there you have it!

Here is some of the fantastic work that we produced over this two-week project. Enjoy!

Superb! I think it's amazing that we all used the same instructions but each of the bulldogs have their own slightly different character. Some have ended up looking very cute, others quite proud and other very brutish. We're sticking with the animal theme for our next project which should be posted in a couple of weeks. Good job!

DB.

Africa Classroom display

Just thought I'd share a picture of our newly updated Africa classroom display. It shows some of our work on patterns at the top, some of our pencil work on lions and then our savannah pieces. The final stage of this Africa unit is something we've not done before in year 3. We're attempting African masks!
DB.

African savannah with normal class

We've been working through a unit in our art lessons focusing on Africa over the past couple of weeks. We got the idea from seeing work at another school and I also used some ideas from these beautiful pictures.

We looked at pictures on the pinterest first of all and did lots of thinking and planning for our own pictures. The class had the option whether they wanted to draw their own animal or use a stencil. They were given the success criteria that they had to include at least one animal, one border with a pattern and one tree.

We spent the first lesson practising drawing different animal silhouettes and drawing a rough composition. We used some of our previous pattern work to think of border ideas and I modeled some of the easier options on the board.

The following week we painted our background after lots of talk about blending. We went red, red-orange, orange, orange-yellow and finally yellow.

Once dry, we drew our border/animal/tree in pencil and  painted over it in black tempera once happy.

The pictures don't really do the work justice as they're amazing in real life.

Hot and Cold Portraits with year 6 (5th grade)

I was asked to do an art afternoon as a treat for some of the older children who did not go on a trip. I attempted something a bit trickier than the projects with the art club as these children are 2-3 years older. I decided to go for a Hot and Cold Portrait and I'm very satisfied with the results.

Equipment
Portrait photograph, ruler, compass, pencil, black pen, felt tip (or other medium), tracing paper

1. Take a portrait photograph and print out onto the size you want.

2. Use a pencil or black pen to trace the photograph. (We traced because of time constraints, you could always draw a self-portrait using mirrors etc)

3. We then photocopied the tracing paper onto drawing paper to give us a clear space to work on.

4. We then measured up the page and dotted every 3cms and did the same across the top.

5. Draw the lines across the page but not across the face/hair/clothing.

6. Use a compass to draw 5-6 different size circles across the picture. I recommend one across one of the eyes, across part of the mouth and a couple around the hair.

7. Use warm colours and colour in all of the areas outside of the circles. Whenever you hit a line you need to change colour. Try not to have the same colour next to or on top of each other. You will also notice that I used different patterns for the hair to add a different creative aspect.

8. Do the same thing inside the circles but use cool colours.

9. And you're done! Of course, you could do the colour scheme the other way round. I tried it and it came out as shown below. I left it up to the class to choose which they would prefer to do.

Here are some excellent examples of the work from the class that I took. Well done!

DB.

Sneak Peak at Art Club #3

Quiet past week or so because we've been on half-term. I've been rustling a few ideas together and have the next few weeks sorted for art. There are going to be some amazing pictures of work this month!

The third project with art club is a 2 week project. We are drawing our own bulldogs using the excellent step-by-step instructions found here.

The pupils were a bit nervous at first and refused to believe that they could ever draw something so detailed.

Here are a few pictures of what they came up with. Next week we're doing the backgrounds that I've planned and I'll post detailed instructions.

Stay tuned for the backgrounds for our British Bulldogs!

DB