Art Day 2019!

Thursday 3rd January - Friday 4th January 2019

This term our enrichment days were based around art. Animate Arts Company came into school and introduced our challenge through a whole school assembly. The children really enjoyed the challenge of creating tree trunks, branches and leaves based on the work of Gustav Klimt and Guiseppe Penone in order to produce a huge art installation in the corridor.

Each class also did their own art work during the week. This is what we got up to:

Oak Class really enjoyed ripping up all the different types of paper for the trees! They were very reflective during the process; they were always thinking back to Jo's tree and thinking about ways to improve or change their own. 

Ash Class spent some time recapping what Jo talked about in assembly and recalling key facts about the artists. Reggie remembered that Klimt’s favourite colour was gold. They gathered leaves to do leaf printing and compared the shapes and sizes of the leaves. After that they investigated different techniques to get the most out of their prints and looked at which sides of the leaves to use.  They also read 'After the Storm' and spoke about different animals you may find living in woodlands. 

Beech class used wax candles to draw the silver birch tree trunks. They tried to draw different size trees to show some in the foreground and some in the background. At first this was tricky because it was hard to see where the wax was on our white paper. But then they added watercolours to the background. This made their birch trees appear from nowhere!

 Year 3 were inspired by the work of Gustav Klimt. On Thursday the children used masking tape to create silver birch trees. The children were given the option to use hot or cold colours to create a colour wash for their background. The next day when the paint had dried it was time to carefully pull off the masking tape which the children really enjoyed. Once the masking tape had been pulled off, the children's birch trees were revealed. Finally after studying the marks on a range of pictures/ birch trees in the school grounds, the children used pencil to draw on some fine details. All of Rowan Class worked extremely hard and as a result they have all created a fantastic piece of artwork to be proud of.

 Year 4 enjoyed exploring the woods for inspiration for their artwork. They used leaves and twigs to make symmetrical patterns and collected woodland objects to write a poem about. They also collected leaves and twigs to make their own woodland animals.

Year 5 worked together to create a class project, the overall goal was to create a forest. They worked in groups to manipulate different metal materials and they titled their piece of art 'metal forest'.

Year 6 were set an extra challenge of creating extra tree trunks for our school installation. They also decided to create a new reading area so built different trees and foliage to decorate it with.

Mrs Clarkson also set the school an additional challenge. Every child (and some adults!) created a picture using only cardboard on a cardboard square and each class was given a different challenge ranging from 3D art, textures and portraits to shapes and patterns. These were all joined together to create a masterpiece in the corridor. We decided to stick with the woodland theme and made a border out of sticks to frame it. We learnt a lot about using rubbish to create art this week!

At the end of the week we had a whole school assembly and each class shared their learning. You can come and visit our corridor to see our work. It’s like having a walk in the woods!