print & puppets

Finally managed to catch-up with our y6's today. They've missed several art lessons due to trips and rearranged timetables. Although we won't now have time to do stencil or screen prints we at least managed to have a go with 'polyprint' - thin polystyrene tile that you impress lines into. We even got as far as trying our hand at the reduction process.

 

 

 

 
FS2 have been busy recently learning about jungles so we made some clay-headed stick-puppets.
Using simple push/pull techniques we were able to create recognisable animals.

puppets

In FS1 we've been making panda stick puppets;

 

In Y1 we made 'talking' puppets using a wooden spring peg;

automata & animals

Still bitten by the automata bug and have finally found a use for some vintage game counters that I bought from a flea market about a year ago. Watch this space - will try and post a video(!) of the finished piece.

 

Today y4 visited a local wildlife park. Despite the bitter cold they managed to do some life drawings of the animals.

up and running

Back at school and back into the swing of things. Have decided that this year is going to be my breakthrough year (again!)!!

This week we are drawing as a gentle lead-in to the topics/themes we will be studying over the next few weeks.

In Y4 today we sketched polar animals - using the now legendary 'A is for....' as a starting point.

Hopefully the animals depicted should be recognisable which is what we were after, rather than a photo-realistic image.

 

 

Here's hoping that everyone has a wonderfully creative year!

(Hmm, not too happy with the photo!)

went to the zoo

For our end of year trip we are planning to go to a reasonably local zoo. I went on a recce yesterday to gather info for the 'risk assessment' because you can't just take the kids out on a whim these days. I know there are pros and cons about keeping animals in zoos but for a bunch of young children the educational aspects of such places are huge. Spotted these chaps all parked up in a row. I thought they'd organised themselves very tidily!

a is for ... scorpion

One of the 'characters' in my class was playing with a paper scorpion today. He'd made it himself bless him. Inspired, I penned a simple 'how-to' to show him how he could also draw one, based on the ubiquitous 'A'.
Also sold another one of the 'A is for Art' booklets as well ! Probably still won't make it onto the Christmas best sellers list though. Still, I live in hope.

clay animals

Today we managed to paint up some clay pieces made a while ago.

I love the drop of 'blood' on the bottom lip of this snake!

even more clay!

Seem to be on a sculpting binge lately - must be something to do with the tactile nature of clay. We started with a simple thumb pot (pinch pot) and went from there.

life circles

In science we are currently 'doing' life cycles. In art therefore I showed the children how easy it was to create recognisable images from circles (life 'circles'). I demonstrated how they could use the same basic template to create pictures of a wide variety of animals - see my 'here's one I did earlier' pics for the polar bear, dog, lion and elephant. I also showed them that the lion could, by the judicious use of spots, stripes etc., become virtually any big cat.

Have put together a very rough dummy copy of my 4-way story book and have decided to send it off to agents/publishers to gauge the response - wish me luck.

book proposal

Have put a drawing book proposal into the ether - well, e-mailed it to a few agents anyway. I've developed a unique and very simple method for creating easily recognisable pictures and have got to the point where I am tentatively pushing it out there. Probably way above my humble station but you never know.

Naive art

Today just showed Y4 how to do a wash, which we then overpainted with simple, representational images of animals. Turned out in very much a naive/folk art style.