The House With Wings: Mixed Media

Showing posts with label Mixed Media. Show all posts

Monday, November 4, 2013

#6 Ultimate Pet: Imagining and Inventing

Learning Areas: The Arts- creating and making, exploring and responding, History- historical knowledge, Design - investigating and designing, Communication- listening, viewing and responding, English -language and literature
Materials: visual diaries, felt-tipped pens, crayons, coloured pencils

We have talked and experimented with two of the elements of art: colour and line. Today I want to get back to the heart of what art is.

Can you think of some of the reasons why we make art?
* children's responses are in inverted commas

"To find colours?"
That's right. Art can be a way to explore and find out.
"Making it about..things you are interested in"
Yes! Artists often use their art to communicate or make a statement about something important to them.

Art can also be about:
- Transforming a space and changing the ways we see things - like Yayoi Kusama (#3 Blending Colour, Transforming Spaces)
- Telling a story like Ronnie Tjanpitjimpa (#4 Big Lines, No End in Sight)
-Imagining how the world could be different or inventing things, like an artist we are going to learn about today.

Artists can be innovators who change the world.

Tuning in : The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan
Let's read a book by one of my favourite author/illustrators - Shaun Tan. Shaun uses a variety of media to make his pictures and often adds tiny details that each add meaning to the work.

The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan, Lothian Books, 2000

The children are now used to 'turning on their artist eyes' to notice details and creative choices the artist has made. They point out the warm colours Shaun has used, express surprise at how much detail there is and wonder at how Shaun has created the many layers in the work.

Artist Profile: Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci was an artist who lived over 500 years ago. He was a polymath – which meant he was interested in and very good at many things. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventer, botanist, anatomist and writer.

Leonardo was curious about everything. He used his artist eyes all the time to observe the world.
He lived during a time called The Renaissance.

Leonardo imagined many things which didn’t exist yet during his time.

We take some time to look at images of Leonardo and his inventions. The children are fascinated by his detailed drawings.

Making

We are going to do some imagining and inventing today just like Shaun Tan and Leonardo Da Vinci.

In your scrap books you are going to create the ultimate ‘lost thing’ pet:

I’d like you to do lots of imagining. How did you find your pet? Where does it live, what does it eat? Your pet can be funny, useful, scary, silly, beautiful or cuddly.

How many legs does your pet have? Does is even have legs?- maybe it has wheels or wings… Is your pet hairy or scaly or smooth? How does it see or sense the world? Why do you love your pet – what qualities does it have?

The children have been working in regular class on using adjectives and this is an opportunity to link with that learning to boost their confidence in using descriptive words.

You can use any medium from your pencil case to create your pet - crayon, coloured pencil or felt-tipped pen.

The children spend about half an hour working on their pets, which requires some effort to maintain attention and keep adding detail.

Reflection

Lets talk about our pets. Can you think of three adjectives to describe your pet?

New Vocabulary adjective, Renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci, innovation

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

#2 A Colour Poem for You

Learning Areas: the arts - creating and making, exploring and responding, interpersonal learning, English- speaking and listening, vocabulary extension, observation, visual communication
Materials: acrylic paint (suitable for 5 year olds), brushes, paint pots, newspaper (for protecting surfaces), old magazines with diverse high quality content (old national geographics, special interest hobby magazines), scissors suitable for 5 year olds, glue sticks

This is my second session with preps and year ones.
I ask the children to "turn on your artist eyes" - which means to become super observant of the kinds of details many people overlook. We begin by sitting in a circle. My current practice is to avoid using raised hands when asking the children to respond. We are all practicing the kind of co-operative, intuitive turn-taking that is expected out in the world.

Tuning in: Our colour spectrum scroll

I would love to see the collaborative work you made last week and see how it has changed since you worked on it between classes.

We get out the mixed media colour spectrum scroll (from session#1 Art- What's that about?) and roll it out.

Lets use our artist eyes and notice some things about this art-work.You might notice some things about lines, shapes, the shades of colour, the depth of colour, patterns, representational images (pictures of things you can recognise), what has happened to the paper, spaces that haven’t been filled...

The children do pretty well at not talking over one another. They share what they observe:

"I can see lots of scribbly lines"

" I can see lots of red over there"

" I did that bit - that's indigo and violet"

Exploring: artists who use colour in their work

Today I’m going to share some artists with you who have made illustrations for books. Sometimes artists use colours to convey an emotion - to make you feel a certain way or to let you know how the characters are feeling. The colours can be grouped into two 'feeling groups' : cool colours and warm colour.

This book is called Oh, No! George. I like it because it's funny. Lets see what you think. With your artist eyes turned on, tell me as we read, what you notice about how the artist has used colour.

I read Oh, No! George and the children tell me what they see. They notice that the pages with George doing naughty things is warm or hot colours and the pages with Harris are cool. They also notice that on some pages the colour goes all the way to the edge of the page but on other pages it has a border.

We call this full bleed when the illustrator has decided to make the colour go all the way to the edge of the page.
Shall we read another book? This one is called Where Does Thursday Go?

The children start to show that they are picking up new vocabularly quickly- telling me which pages are full bleed and telling me that the illustrator has mainly used cool colours. We talk a little about the feelings the colours create.

"I think cool colours are a bit sad"
" I think Harris has cool colours because he is, like, a bit more sensible than George"
" George has lots of orange and purple"

Exploring and Responding: A Colour Poem for You

In the week between lessons I have written a poem for the children about colours and the feelings they evoke and made an art-work to show them: a visual 'colour poem'.

I am RED

I crackle and burn

I burst like fireworks

Sometimes I am sweet like strawberrys

Or spicy like chillies

I wake you up with sirens

I am RED

I am ORANGE

I am the dusty soil of the desert

Or a citrus grin at the footy

I glow on birthday candles

& slow you down at traffic lights

I am ORANGE

I am YELLOW

I shake my shaggy lions mane

And lift my sunflower head to follow the light

I can make you screw your face up with lemoniness

Or melt on your tongue like button on toast

I am YELLOW

I am GREEN

I shoot,curl, sprout and grow

In leaves, buds and blades of grass

I’m a python wound around a tree

Sometimes I’m disgusting like snot

But also cool like dappled shade

I am GREEN

I am BLUE

I wash the sea and sky clean

And dress you every day for school

I’m a1st prize ribbon on sports day

And icy cold toes in winter

I am BLUE

I am INDIGO and VIOLET

The colours of royal robes and

Cadburys chocolate wrappers

I make purple irises sway like flags

I am the ink to use for a love poem

I am INDIGO AND VIOLET

Making: A paint and collage colour poem

We are each going to make an artwork today that tells the viewer a story about colour.

I show my artwork (pictured above at beginning of poem)

The type of work we are going to make is a monochrome work. That means that I have used only one colour in my composition.

We are going to begin by applying paint to part of the page, then we are going to layer drawings and cut out collage images to the work to produce a picture that evokes a mood and tells a story.

I ask the children to listen to all the instructions before choosing a place to work at one of the tables. There are sheets of mid weight white A3 paper laid out and the rest of the materials: paint, scissors, magazines, paper.
I tell the children where each colour is located and that they will need to choose just one colour for this composition.
I ask them to lay down their paint first and then layer their colour poem with images using collage or crayons.

Take some time to look at the page and think about your composition.

Be aware of how much paint you apply to your surface. The paper can only absorb so much paint before it begins to warp or break down.

If you work across your paint your work will smudge. If you want to smudge that is ok – we can incorporate it into the artwork. If you don’t like smudges you will need work differently to not drag your arm across the page as you apply other media.

Some of the students' colour poems are shown throughout this blog entry. I really noticed how individual each child's approach was.

Image Copyright Heather Marsh, 2013

Reflection

Lets talk about our work:

We are going to walk around the room and use our artist eyes to notice things about one another’s work. Remember to be respectful – at this point we are all experimenting so there is no need to criticise the work.

New Vocabulary monochrome, composition, collage, warm colours, cool colours, media, warp, full bleed

#1 Art: what's that about?

Learning Areas: science, interpersonal learning, fine motor skills, English (speaking and listening, extending vocabulary)

Materials: glass prisms suspended by framing wire, bubble blowers and (good quality) bubble mix, long paper scrolls, drawing mixed media (wax and oil pastel crayons, coloured pencils, coloured felt-tip pens), some examples of my work

March, 2013
This is the first lesson I did with two mixed classes of preps and year ones. I have an hour with each group. There are about 17 children in each class. The classroom teacher is present and participates (which is great!)

I wanted to know what the children knew.
I asked them if they would be comfortable trying to take turns talking the way adults do - by waiting for an opportunity to speak, by being attentive and non-verbally negotiating - rather than raising hands and being called on.
I explained that adults actually find this tricky too.

We began with a short conversation about the nature of art. The children's responses are in quotation marks.

Tuning In: What is art and why do we make it?

Who am I? My name is Heather. I am an artist.

What is art? Can you tell me anything you know or think about art?

The Gift Of Hindsight Heather Marsh, 2008

"Art is painting"

"It can be drawing"

"I think it's pictures"

"Paintings.."

"I like drawing things..."

You already have some ideas about what art could be.
I make art to communicate ideas in a way that is different to just talking or writing about it.
I like that my artwork allows people to find their own meaning about what I have made.

At the moment I am interested in making art about a few different things:

- thoughts and memories or stories from my past

- funny conversations

- the relationship people have to nature.

I don’t like to stick to just one way of working. Sometimes I use collage, sometimes I paint or do sculpture but a lot of the time I draw with pen and ink.

I show them The Gift of Hindsight (pictured, above) and pass around inked eggs. I show my drawing book and a collage from a children's illustration (Eupholus Bloom pictured below)

I'm excited to explore with you the things you are interested in and how you might like to share those ideas through art.

Exploring:The Elements of Art

How do we make art?

"We use paint"

" We can draw on paper with crayons
or pencils"

"I like drawing dogs"

"I want to draw my horse"

There aren’t any strict rules for how to make art. In fact there are limitless ways to make art. You can learn about the different elements of art though, to help to shape your visual idea or message the way you want to.
The first element we are going go explore today is colour.

The big question we are going to try to answer today is “Where does colour come from?”

Investigation: Let's Find Colour

I take the children outside. It is a sunny day. I have prisms on twisted framing wire that hang from sturdy plastic handles. I also have bubble blowers.
We go to a big open area and the children begin a mission: to find rainbows. They are very excited and cluster in groups around the rainbows they are making on the ground with the prisms. I ask them to notice how many colours they can see and ask them to name them.

We come inside and talk very briefly about the colours that we found – how white light is broken into the visible spectrum. We talk about the other things we need to make colour – our eyes.

Other animals see colour differently to us because of the structure of their eyes. Bees can see ultra violet light. Cats and dogs mainly see in black and white and grey, but they can see some blue and yellow.

Cows cannot see colour at all – their world is in what we call grey-scale.
Colours in the visible spectrum are: red, orange yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet

Making: A colour spectrum scroll

We are going to collaborate on a large-scale piece of art.

I have a long scroll of paper. I divide the class into seven groups. Each group is assigned a colour in the visible spectrum and begin free drawing to fill their area.
Some of the children draw recognisable things, others enjoy making scribbles, shapes and textures. The result is very effective (and I apologise- I didn't take a photo!)
The final work is a frieze of colours blending gradually into one another from red through to violet, composed of swatches of texture, patterns, scribbles, pictures of dogs, horses, trees, flowers, cars, faces and monsters..

Reflection

We gather around the scroll on the floor and talk about the things we notice.

"I tried to fill up the whole page"" Can you see there? That's my horse"" It looks good the way everybody has drawn together"

I can see that some of you have made representational drawings - pictures of things we can recognise. Some of you made abstract drawings - shapes and textures.

We sit back in our circle and close our eyes.

In your mind I'd like you to travel back in time to when we were outside looking for colour. Think of the things you saw and did and what you learned about where colour comes from.

"I could see the rainbow straight away""When I spinned the prism around it made sparkles" " I couldn't see all the colours."" I want to know how all the colours come out of sun"

I thank them all for such an inspiring first session.
Following this class, Sam, one of the prep teachers leads an investigation in science to find out more about the spectrum, how we see colour and how other animals see colour.

My Learning: Prep's and Year 1's are fun and exhausting

I have loved my first class with preps and ones. I'm excited about discovering and creating with them. I also feel like I have run a marathon. The prep teachers assure me this will pass. When I get home I have a Nana nap. I realise that I need to make time to document their work - even if I feel too tired after the pack-up! I really wish I had taken photographs of the spectrum scroll.

New Vocabulary spectrum, elements of art, prism, collaborate, collage, grey-scale, representational, abstract

Further Resources
http://www.colormatters.com/color-matters-for-kids/how-animals-see-color