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.
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).
While exploring the theme of the brain in Art lessons, I saw an activity to make a ‘brain hat’ by printing, cutting & folding a template, but wanted something more ‘arty’ so using the right side of my brain- (known as the creative artistic side!) I came up with the idea to make a paper mache hat with the two sides- the creative side using any chosen design and art materials, and the logical/reasoning side represented by cogs and other bits like a steampunk ‘machine’.
The students blew up a balloon to about the size of their head and began to do alternate layers of newspaper and plain ‘newsprint’ paper to the top half of the balloon. We used ‘Cellogel’ which is like a wallpaper paste. I actually mixed in a bit of PVA with it for extra strength. Another recipe some use is flour and water. They did minimum four layers. This took us two lessons.
We had already discussed the two sides of the brain, so once the paper mache ‘hat’ was dry, students drew a line down the middle to divide into left and right brain. They proceeded to paint and add embellishments to each side. For the logical / reasoning side we used supplies from Zart Art: Wooden Gears and Cogs and Buckles and Bits, along with ribbed cardboard, mesh, and industrial look adhesive foil for some great textures that are highlighted with the copper coloured Rub ‘n Buff.
The creative side was all about colour, pattern and embellishments including pom poms, patty pans, sequins, buttons and any ‘bits’ they wanted to use.
Lesson Plan with learning intentions, success criteria, activity discussion and steps, materials & resources, student examples.
‘STRIPE’ and Paypal are used to process payment. Please check you type in the correct email for link to be sent automatically. The link will also be on the CONFIRMATION page after you pay to download immediately. Any problems contact me at primaryschoolart1@gmail.com
During our “Brain” themed art lessons, we looked at the art of David Shillinglaw from the UK. He is known for his drawings, paintings and sculpture that responds to planet Earth, the cosmos, nature, landscape, & humans in the universe. He had an exhibition in Spain in March 2022 entitled COSMOS which included a number of paintings and clay sculptures of human heads presented as a “vessel full of dreams, a flesh machine in constant flux” and a “cosmic container, filled with fears, fantasies, facts and fictions. Enjoy your head space, it’s where you live”.
“Your head is a cosmic container, filled with fears, fantasies, facts and fiction. Enjoy your head space, it’s where you live” ~David Shillinglaw 2022
We discussed his Pot Heads (I called them Clay Heads!) and his Humanoid artworks, describing them and suggesting meanings that might be expressed by them, especially in relation to our brain and it’s various parts and functions.
To make the head, we used air dry clay, as sadly I do not have a kiln. The students broke their piece of clay into half and used one piece to form a “tall” thumb pot, drawing the sides up rather than out. The other half was used to make the top of the head (brain!) and the neck. The top of the head was formed into a shallow pot until it fitted the bottom part of the head. Students used the scratch and slip method to join the neck to the head, then smoothed the clay together for a seamless join. They needed to make sure it sat steadily and was balanced with the “brain hat” on top.
Students used acrylic tempera paint to paint their heads. Once dry they used paint pens to add details.
I did this project with Year 3/4, but would be really great do with Year 5/6 (11-12 year olds). Firstly, students viewed and analysed different types of landscapes by Australian artists, including Streeton, Drysdale, McCubbin, Namitjira, and Nolan.
Students began this project by choosing an Australian landscape type they wanted to depict. We sorted photos into the following categories: Beach, Bush, Mountains, Desert, River and Rain forest.
Students Began by mixing paint colours to match their photo to paint the background/ underneath layer of their landscape inside a sturdy box lid.
Next lesson they began to texture such as sand, tissue paper, bark, etc to the background- furthest away, moving to middle ground and then foreground. When complete they thought of an interesting title for their landscape and filled out a reflection/ evaluation sheet which was stuck to the back of the box.
Lesson Plan aligned to Year 3/4 Victorian Curriculum with learning intentions, success criteria, slides of Australian landscapes for analysis, analysis sheet, lesson activities and discussion questions, examples of student work, reflection/ evaluation sheet.
‘STRIPE’ and Paypal are used to process payment. Please check you type in the correct email for link to be sent automatically. The link will also be on the CONFIRMATION page after you pay to download immediately. Any problems contact me at primaryschoolart1@gmail.com
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!
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.
Lesson Plan, slides, self evaluation sheet.
‘STRIPE’ and Paypal are used to process payment. Please check you type in the correct email for link to be sent automatically. The link will also be on the CONFIRMATION page after you pay to download immediately. Any problems contact me at primaryschoolart1@gmail.com
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.
Lesson Plan, learning intentions, success criteria, links to useful artist videos, lesson steps, rubric for self evaluation.
‘STRIPE’ and Paypal are used to process payment. Please check you type in the correct email for link to be sent automatically. The link will also be on the CONFIRMATION page after you pay to download immediately. Any problems contact me at primaryschoolart1@gmail.com
I had seen this lesson on various school blogs using Nick Rowland’s explosive volcano artwork as inspiration for students to produce their own using some of his techniques.
LEARNING INTENTIONS:
To respond to a volcano artwork by UK artist Nick Rowland.
To make an artwork of a volcano using techniques explored in Nick Rowland’s work.
SUCCESS CRITERIA:
I identify materials and techniques used in an artwork.
I can use materials and techniques with paint such as splattering, flicking, dripping, blowing etc to capture the explosive nature of a volcano inspired by Nick Rowland artwork.
I can describe the process, materials & techniques used in my own volcano artwork
Explore & respond:
Students first explored his use of materials and techniques by brainstorming and listing how they think he applied the paint to get various effects. Seesaw example of student response >
Students viewed portraits made by Dutch artist Marten Jansen, discussing use of colour ,line, shape. I just used “head shots”; some of his pieces are not suitable to use in primary school, eg. ‘Street walker’, ‘Solicitation’ for obvious reasons!!
They discussed different colour combinations to show emotion or create a mood and described the elements of art used. Talk about various lines used (thick, thin, long, short), shapes (circle, triangles, organic shapes) and colour.
Students worked from a photo of themselves made into a line drawing. (I took photos of the students, edited them on Photoscape (like Photopea) to change it into a line drawing, and then printed them on A3 cartridge paper. Alternatively, you could get them to trace their printed out photo with carbon paper. They then used colours, lines and shapes to fill it in using chalk pastels, (we used square blocks) using the edge, tip, side to produce various thickness and intensity of line. Blocks of colour can be used too, especially in the background.
Lesson plan, artist artwork examples for inspiration, learning intentions, success criteria, lesson steps, self evaluation sheet, student examples.
‘STRIPE’ and Paypal are used to process payment. Please check you type in the correct email for link to be sent automatically. The link will also be on the CONFIRMATION page after you pay to download immediately. Any problems contact me at primaryschoolart1@gmail.com
This lesson requires careful cutting out for the silhouette soldiers for it to look effective. I printed out pictures of ANZAC soldiers from the internet that would be suitable as silhouettes (on A3 paper). Students cut out the ‘positive’ shapes of the soldiers to be left with the ‘negative’ background to use like a stencil for the silhouette.
Learning Intention:
To make a commemorative ANZAC day picture with silhouettes of ANZAC soldiers.
SUCCESS CRITERIA:
I can carefully cut out shapes of ANZAC soldiers from a printed out /photocopy picture of ANZAC soldiers.
I can use the negative shape as a stencil to paint in the shapes of the soldiers.
I can use chalk pastels to fill in the background around my soldier shapes, blending and smudging colours.
When we had to go to remote teaching last term, I had to throw out my planned lessons as they required too many “special materials” that students would not have handy at home. So it got down to, “What materials are easily accessible for all students at home?” Greylead and coloured pencils and copy paper! So I knew it would involve drawing and needed to be about learning new concepts and skills as well. I usually do some sort of one point perspective art in the senior years, so this was the perfect opportunity.
I broke down the tasks with video and powerpoint demonstrations of the key points about perspective- horizon line, vanishing point and converging lines, followed by simple Seesaw activities to show understanding of the basics. (Oh how I love the Seesaw app!)
Activity instructions were: Show each of the following on the photos using a coloured mark or line: A red dot for the vanishing point. A blue line for the horizon. Green lines for converging perspective lines. Drag each word to label the items.
The next lesson was to get students to practise drawing using a horizon line, vanishing point and converging lines, using basic shapes above and below the horizon line with a video demonstration.
We looked at on of the most famous paintings of a bedroom- ‘ Bedroom in Arles’ by Vincent Van Gogh and used the converging lines on some of the furniture to estimate the Vanishing Point (and therfore horizon. (Some of the lines are a bit out, but Van Gogh was probably working by eye!
The focus of the next lesson was to start drawing the basic geometric shapes that will become bedroom furniture. They uploaded their draft to Seesaw for me to check them, and for some I needed to draw some lines on their draft to show what to do, or where to draw, as well as explain- (when in the classroom you can just point it out while they are working on paper!)
Students drew the basic shapes (using rectangles initially) then using converging lines to the vanishing point to create the shape of furniture, doors, windows etc.
Once their draft with shapes was checked, they were able to go ahead and add details, add to the shapes to make them into furniture and accessories in a bedroom, like their own.
My examples on Brushes App, but I also made videos of each step drawn on paper using the rectanglar shapes and lines leading to the vanishing point as a first step before adding details.
Video of three bedrooms drawn on Brushes App demonstrating the use of vanishing point, basic end shape and converging lines.
