Tag: Elizabeth St Hilaire inspired

COLLAGE COWS ~ Inspired by Elizabeth St Hilaire. Year 5/6 art lesson.

Our school was doing a “Discover Dairy” inquiry unit and so we were making lots of artworks of cows! The inspiration for this lesson was from “paper paintings” of cows by Elizabeth St Hilaire (Nelson)

“Paper Paintings” by Elizabeth St Hilaire

The students looked at some St Hilaire’s “paper painted” cows and inferred the techniques and materials they think she used.

We watched a couple of videos with Elizabeth St Hilaire talking about her materials and showing the techniques she uses.

The students then chose a photo of a chosen breed of cow to crop to a square to use for a reference to make a realistic drawing and get the shape and colouring right.

They drew a grid on the photo (digitally) then ruled up a larger piece of paper to enlarge each part of the drawing of the cow’s head.

Next they used the photo as a reference to mix paints to match to do an underpainting and make some painted paper.

The painted paper was used to collage over the “underpainting”

The students used a grid to enlarge the drawing from their cow photo, then mixed paints to do an underpainting, followed by collaging over the painting with painted papers to give the texture.

We took 4-5 one hour lessons to complete and evaluate the artworks. Full lesson plan with learning intentions, success criteria, lesson activities with process, useful video links and students self evaluation rubric, all linked to Victorian Curriculum to purchase below.

AUD $5 for email download of full PDF lesson plan and the Student Rubric (Word Document)

AUTUMN BIRCH TREES: Elizabeth St Hilaire inspired – Year 5/6 art lesson

Painted paper collages of ‘Fall’ birch trees by Elizabeth St Hilaire were the inspiration for these mixed media artworks by Year 5 students. The process we used was different than that of St Hilaire, though I got the students to suggest what materials and techniques they think were used by her.

Elizabeth St Hilaire was born and raised in New England, USA and has lived in Florida for more than 20 years. She makes collages from painted, found and hand made papers, which she tears and collages to make her amazing textured and patterned artworks of landscapes, trees, animals, flowers, birds and portraits. St Hilaire does an underpainting first then uses swatches of painted and found paper in matching colours to glue over the top, giving her work a painterly finish, with the texture of a collage. We used a different process, painting the collaged newspaper after it was stuck down. For this project we looked at her Autumn (Fall) Birch trees for inspiration!

Lesson Plan for Year 5-6 aligned to Victorian Curriculum, with learning intentions, success criteria, lesson activities with materials and techniques, artist and student examples, plus rubric reflection sheet.

AUD $2 for email download of this lesson plan