LEARNING INTENTIONS: To learn about the Primary Colours To learn about line and shape To learn about the artist Alexander Calder
SUCCESS CRITERIA: I can use the primary colours in a digital artwork. I can use various lines and ORGANIC shapes in an artwork. I know that Alexander Calder made artworks and mobiles that often used primary colours.
This lesson uses the Brushes App to make a digital artwork. We looked at Alexander Calder’s paintings and discussed the colours, lines and shapes used. We looked at the colour wheel to identify the primary colours.
LINES: curved, loopy, wavy, straight SHAPES: rounded and organic, circles
Students opened Brushes App to start a “new painting”. I showed them how to find or edit a ‘brush’ so they had a smooth stroke and choose black to draw various lines and some shapes inspired by Calder’s work.
They then need to add a layer (this will need to be demonstrated) Primary colours: red blue and yellow, are chosen to colour in the shapes and maybe add a shape, spiral, or line.
The outline layer is dragged on top of the colouring in layer.
Remote teaching and learning called for some lessons that would be easily done at home with little equipment, just an ipad and a good eye! My students all have ipads, so I devised some art and photography lessons based on David Hockney’s “joiners” or photo-montages that he did in the 1980’s.
Hockney first experimented with photo collages mainly using polaroid photos in grid compositions. Later he used prints of 35mm photographs and created collages with many photos joined and overlapped to recreate the overall scene. Hockney was interested in showing the passing of time (photos were taken over a number of minutes) and often show slightly different perspectives of the subject. There is a cubist style about his joiners as they explore movement as well as fractured parts of a whole.
David Hockney photo Joiners
This was a great unit for the students to use photography, but also learn about an amazing artist. I did lessons where the students had to research David Hockney, view his photo-collages to understand the techniques he used to make them, analyse a chosen work and compare two of Hockney’s photo joiners. Then of course some lessons of actually taking photos and arranging them in Pic Collage. Here is a couple:
PHOTO COLLAGE OF AN OBJECT LESSON:
Learning Intention: To take photos of an object / outdoor scene in parts to be able to arrange together in a grid and freestyle format to re-create the whole object or scene. Success Criteria: I can take photos of an object / outdoor scene in sections, by zooming in and moving my camera along in lines to take a photo of each part (slightly overlapped) I can arrange the photos into a grid & freestyle format using Pic Collage so it reassembles the whole object /scene.
First lesson I introduced the students to David Hockney’s photo-collages which he termed “joiners”, explaining the two types- which I called ‘grid style’ (which his polaroid photos) and ‘freestyle’ where he overlapped and joined the photos. First you need to choose a household object to photograph (teapot, pot plant, clock, large toy, chair etc.) I demonstrated on a video how to photograph an item in sections: 3×3 (9 photos) with an ipad and then using those photos to arrange in the PicCollage app into a ‘grid’ format and then a ‘freestyle’ format. Here are some student examples:
Another lesson was to do a freestyle collage of an outdoor scene, like their backyard, the front of their house, the street, a park or playground. For this one they could do more photos, but they still need to take them carefully moving the camera along and then down to the next row. It doesn’t matter if the edges of the collage are uneven.
Freestyle “joiners” / photo collage of an outdoor scene using Pic Collage App to arrange photos.
STUDENT EXAMPLES of PHOTO – COLLAGES:
I have a 7 lesson /activity Unit Plan below that I did all by remote with my Year 5-6 students. The students had their own ipad and I used Seesaw to post activities and they used their ipad to take photographs and make the collages. I have included a link to a home made video demonstration (amatuer, but it did the job!) of how to photograph an object and make a joiner collage in grid and freestyle using Pic Collage. Each lesson has the Learning Intentions and Success Criteria. This is the lesson sequence that I did:
Activity 1: Digital Artist Poster (research and present)