Still Life Fruit on a plate ~ Year 5

There are so many artists that do still life of fruit and vegetables, but I often like to introduce the students to Australian artists. These fruit / vegetable still life were inspired by Lucy Culliton from New South Wales who paints landscapes and portraits as well. I found some artworks she did from the early 2000’s and thought they would be great to view and discuss for their own ideas. This painting of Lucy’s has different plates to note the patterns and how she gives form to her fruit with light and dark tones using tints and shades of the colours.

Students began by choosing a fruit or vegetable they wanted to draw and paint (from Google images or from some photos I provided) They traced a circle for the plate and sketched their food from a reference photo. They then added a pattern around the edge of the plate.

I demonstrated some techniques with watercolour paints for them to try, being careful to not overpaint it initially, keeping it fairly light and watery, then adding more opaque layers on the darker areas shown in their reference photo.

Students looked at some images of plates with patterned edges or designed their own, in grey lead first, then coloring in with pencils.

To help give the fruit and plate dimension, students added charcoal and smudged to blend it.

Lesson plan aligned to Victorian Curriculum for Year 5-6, learning intention and success criteria, lesson steps, artist artwork response sheet, photo reference images of fruit on plates and ideas for patterned plates; student self evaluation questions to discuss or write about.

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AUD $2.50 for email download of this lesson plan

Fruit & Vegetable Characters: Mulga (Joel Moore) style ~ Yr 5-6

You can only love the fun and zany art of Joel Moore, aka Mulga. ( @mulgatheartist ) His characters and scenery are bright and imaginative. We looked at his mural of fruit characters that he did in a shopping centre in Sydney as well as his process of drawing, colouring and outlining his pictures through some videos on YouTube.

After watching Mulga’s art process on several videos, students completed the following sheet. (It could be used on Seesaw, rather than printing out.) His ‘Art Process’ is 1. pencil sketch 2. colouring /painting 3. Outlining and adding texture marks in black fine liner.

mulga-the-artist_sheet Download

Students chose a fruit or vegetable as a character, sketch it out in pencil, with Mulga style glasses, nose, moustache/ beard and mouth. They then coloured with coloured markers.

Darker shades of colour can be added if applicable, or use a fine line black marker to add texture lines or shapes to the fruit. Everything is then outlined, before being cut out.

To make the background, a colour cover paper was chosen that works well with their fruit/ veg. Folding up a piece of white paper several times, a shape, like a cloud, star etc. was cut out and glued onto the cover paper background and then their character glued on.

Finally once complete, students gave their character a name and wrote a silly story about it (like Mulga does).

Reverse Acetate Portraits ~ Year 5-6 Art lesson

Once I worked how to do a reverse acetate portrait, I got Year 5/6’s to do one; the Year 6’s were displayed at Graduation. This is a relatively easy process and in most cases successful! Win-win!

Students were photographed to include head and shoulders to the chest, and printed out in black and white on A4 paper. Next, a piece of acetate was taped (just at the top) over the photograph, so they could lift it up and flip it over.

Using a black permanent marker (we used Fine Point Sharpies) students trace around their face and features, hair, clothing, etc, and if they flip the acetate over so it is on top of the back of the photo (white paper) they will see if they have missed any lines. If not they leave it flipped over- photo will be face down and this is the REVERSE of the acetate sheet- the side that you paint on. Their outline is on the other side (the front).

On this reverse side of the acetate, students used either warm or cool colours to paint just the hair, clothing and lips and eyebrows if they wanted. They could mix colours and add white; best to do a second coat so that the paint is not transparent. Of course you can use other colour schemes- primary, complementary, analogous. We didn’t have a lot of time left for colour theory!

PAINT ON REVERSE SIDE OF ACETATE: WHEN TURNED OVER THE OUTLINES ARE ON TOP

Next step it to make some painted paper in the opposite colourway than the portrait (cool>warm, warm>cool). You could use gelli plates to make prints, but we just painted the paper, and whilst wet used texture combs to drag through the paint to create something interesting lines ( wavy, swirly, straight) and blending different colours a little.

WARM COLOURED PAINTED PAPER USING TEXTURE COMBS

All that needs to be done to complete the reverse acetate portraits is to slip the painted paper under the acetate sheet (the painted side is on the reverse). I left the photo attached and for display, a card frame was added plus a backing sheet, and Yr 6 students decorated it with their name and the year for Graduation.

Reverse Acetate Portrait Lesson- Email download for $2

Milk Bottle Cows- John Kelly inspired ~ Year 5/6 art lesson

Melbourne artist John Kelly is well known for his many cow sculptures and paintings, but they are rather intriguing because they are a boxy shape and have an elongated neck and small head. It is not until you find out the back story for these strange bovines that they make sense.

His inspiration came from a story about how life size paper mache model cows were made during WWII and placed around airfields to disguise them as farms to Japanese aircraft! The interesting part is that several artists who were serving in the army were instructed to make the cows, including William Dobell who served as an official war artist. In 1943 he won the Archibald Prize with a stylised, exaggerated portrait of fellow artist Joshua Smith, with an elongated neck and small head, which at the time was quite controversial.

So when John Kelly read about this wartime ruse, he decided to make artworks of what he named, “Dobell’s Cows” mimicking portraits Dobell had made with these long necks and small heads on his cows. He imagined how Dobell would have marked out lines to paint them as Holstein or Ayreshire cows with patched markings, maybe had them on wheels to move them around the field, stacked them up line blocks- quite a parody of events!

https://johnkellyartist.com/dobells-cows/

LESSON ACTIVITIES:

Students were shown the artwork, ‘The Incident’ by John Kelly, without any knowledge of the story behind it. I used the Visual Thinking Strategies by posing the questions:

What is going on in this picture?

What do you see that makes you say that?

What else can you find?

After students shared their thoughts, we looked at other artworks by Kelly that help build up the story. I used a Powerpoint (included with lesson plan below) with other works and a look at William Dobell’s portraits to understand how this influenced Kelly’s cows.

Use 2 Litre plastic milk bottles for the cow body.

We used corks for legs because I had a huge tub full of them, but you could just as easily secure rolled cardboard to the front and back.

Start with the legs, covering with strips of wet plaster cloth to join to the bottle, then cover the entire bottle with plaster smoothing as you go.

I sliced off edges of champagne corks to make the thin neck and glued and glued egg shaped poly balls to them. The top of the cork fitted nicely into the opening of the milk bottle with a strip of wet plaster bandage wound around to hold it in place.

When covering the head with plaster strips, ears can be shaped out of the wet plaster.

Horns can be added with the plaster or paper clay like Crayola Model Magic. Once the plaster is dry the cow is painted either black and white for a Holstein cow or reddish-tan for an Ayrshire cow.

AUD $5 email download for lesson plan & PPT/ PDF