#4 Big Lines, No End In Sight

Learning Areas: The Arts- creating and making, exploring and responding, Health and Physical Education- gross motor skills, Geography - spatial awareness, Communication- listening, viewing and responding, English -language and literature, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
Materials: pavement chalk 

Tuning In: Remembering the element of colour

Lets take a moment to remember all the work we did with the element of colour. What can you remember?
"Finding the rainbows"
"When we stuck our colour targets to the walls"
"Making new colours with paint"
That's great - can any of you remember some of the new words we learned? What was the word for the rainbow colours - it was the visible...
With a bit of prompting they remember visible spectrum, primary and secondary colours and installation. 

Exploring: The element of line

Colour is just one of the elements an artist can use to express their ideas. Over the next few weeks we are going to collect more elements which you can combine to bring your ideas to life. 

I showed the class a quick line drawing I have made for them using different weight markers. (I frequently make new work inspired by class- it's a great motivator!) and we spend a little time noticing thick lines and thin lines, wavy, jagged, vertical, horizontal,concentric, zig-zag and scribbly lines. We also noticed how lines were used for representational drawing and the areas where the lines were abstract.

Quick Line Drawing - Image Copyright Heather Marsh, 2013

Exploring some more: Let's read a book!

I read the class the story Say Hello by Jack and Michael Foreman. It uses a single continuous line throughout the illustrations, which, in turn becomes the horizon and various scenes on the pages. As usual we used our 'artist eyes' to notice things on the page. 

Say Hello Published Candlewick Press, 2012

Still Exploring..Artist Feature - Aboriginal artists

We looked at three important Indigenous (Australian) artists and how they have each used line differently - to map the contours of the land, to depict cracked claypans and to mimic and mock modern art.
Drawing the land- Kaliangku the claypans painting of Jackie Kurltjunqinja Gile (Mr. Giles)
Critiquing the politics of art - Scientia e metaphysica, 2002  by Richard Bell
Mapping - the contour line paintings of Doreen Reid Nakamarra and Ronnie Tjampitjinpa  

Untitled Ronnie Tjampitjinpa 2001 (Art Gallery of NSW)

Making - Worlds biggest continuous line work?
When we got onto making the real fun began. I explained to them the concept of continuous line - that as an exercise, sometimes artists will experiment with not taking their pencil off the page until the work is complete. 

We are going to use chalk now to draw onto a very large surface – the basketball court. It is going to be a very big artwork.  I would like you to each take a piece of chalk – it will stay your piece for the whole time we work. 

Massive continuous line work *please note it is illegal to repost images of children without parent permission

I would like you to try to draw patterns with your chalk using an unbroken line. (draw example on the whiteboard) so that if I found the very beginning of your line I could follow it all the way to the end where you finished. 
After we finish the art will get worn away by people walking on it and washed by the rain. This type of art-making is called ephemeral, which means it isn't meant to last.

Remember, the only rule in this art game is: do not take your chalk off the ground until it is completely used up. 

Some of the children worked in small groups *please do not repost images of children 

Some children went on long solo journeys with their chalk 
*please do not repost images of children 

Reflection 
Instead of discussing our work as a group, I asked the children to stand up on the seats by the side of the court and walked up to each in turn asking "Tell me about your line." The children each described a completely unique individual process. 
"I, like went as fast as I could from one end to the other to see how quick I could use up my chalk"
"I sort of drew around the other guys" (at which I commented that he had essentially mapped the movement of the other artists for us) 
"I wanted to draw things- it was hard not taking the chalk off"

New Vocabulary vertical, horizontal, concentric, contour,  ephemeral 
Further Explorations contour lines and mapping, aboriginal desert communities, being inclusive (Say Hello)