The students loved learning about English graffiti artist Banksy and his stencil work. We were working on a unit about graffiti and street art and whether we think it is vandalism or art. The children learnt that while painting on public or private spaces is illegal, many thought if it was appealing and colourful or well drawn it could be classed as art. Banksy’s art is definitely appealing and very well executed, along with being thought provoking or conveying a message. We looked at how artists can use a stencil to very quickly spray a picture onto a wall or surface.
First we experimented with patterned stencils using rollers to print onto paper.
Stencil Prints for the background
I used a scalpel knife to cut some famous Banksy designs onto A4 plastic sheets to use as a stencil with black spray paint. Students could choose two of the Banksy stencils to fit onto their A3 stencilled paper. They pressed the spray button on the black spay paint can while I directed it around the stencil for even coverage. (I am lucky enough to have double doors to the outside that I could open for ventilation whilst spraying just outside the door with a couple of students at a time.)
The topic for the school was ‘Community’ so I thought Year 5 and 6 could look at the houses in the local area (including student’s own homes if they chose). I introduced the Australian artist Howard Arkley (now deceased) and his artwork through a youtube video (see lesson unit plan) and a powerpoint with examples of his artwork. (see below)
Arkley’s house artworks were inspired by houses in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh. After returning from Europe he observed the suburban decorative gates and flywire doors, and used the patterns on his exterior and interior house artworks. He mainly used an airbrush on his artworks because he could make marks quickly and didn’t really like working directly with a paintbrush. He used real estate adverts and magazines for the images.
Howard ArkleyFloral Exterior 1996 by Howard Arkley
First, I actually got the students to do some research to get some basic facts about Arkley and his style and technique of art, and produce it as an ‘artist poster’ (along the way discussing principles of art to help with the composition- balance, variety, etc.)
Students used ipads to take a photo of their own home from the front or from the street, or get a screen shot of it from google street view, or get a screen shot of a local house from a real estate website.
Students at my school have their own ipads, so it makes it easy for them to use apps for digital art. They used the Brushes Redux App (free) to bring in the photo, add a layer and then trace the outline of the house, garden, fence etc. They uploaded just the traced outline to Google classroom, so I could print these off on A3 paper.
They then painted their house and surrounds in exaggerated colours, and blue dye wash for the sky.
Early finishers experimented with making stencil prints, to see the colour contrast and pattern design to help them decide where would be best to use particular patterns.
Next lesson, students printed stencilled patterns onto sections of their house and garden. They masked off areas with strips of paper so they only printed within the chosen outlines.
Lesson plan with success criteria, lesson steps, examples, rubric self evaluation sheet.
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