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).

Guiseppe Arcimboldo Food Portraits — Year 3-4

These lessons were part of the Year 3 & 4 Inquiry Unit of ‘Food Sources’. We began by viewing artworks by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, completing an “I see, I think, I wonder” then shared thoughts, describing, and discussing. We watched a couple of YouTube videos about the artist, before comparing artworks and making our own inspired by Arcimboldo’s portraits.

I went to a market and bought a variety of fruit and veg including $1 bags of food on their last legs! I also got students to bring in pieces of fruit and vegetables to use to make a food portrait. I set up a table with the fruit and veg in containers, some cut in half and 5 face templates to work on. The other students were working on drawing a food face portrait.

Full lesson plan is available below with activities, video links I used, learning intentions and success criteria, Venn Diagram sheet and student evaluation sheet.

AUD $2 for email download Food Faces lesson (Giuseppe Arcimbold inspired)