Chinoiserie

 

Two of our upper primary classes have been looking at how Chinese culture has influenced western culture. Some of the children had studied China in Social studies so we discussed some of the important things that Chinese culture has given the world, like the compass, gunpowder,

paper and silk and of course china.

We looked a typical blue and white china designs.

I played a bit of a trick by showing the class the willow plate. They immediately guessed that it came from China. They were surprised to find out that the famous willow pattern china is actually English.

 It came as a result of people being interested in things from china and it became fashionable to imitate the Chinese style in other countries.

We watched this animated version of the Chinese story that inspired the plate design.

Then we had a go at creating some of our own. Firstly we sketched some ideas in our visual diaries, taking care to copy the patterns and shapes of designs that made the plates look Chinese.

We used blue, black and white acrylic paint to create shades (adding black) and tints (adding white) of blue.

delightful aren't they?

 

These are from my year 6/7 class.

Klee Cityscape

With this project we started by looking at some of Paul Klee's cityscape paintings, with a particular focus those using geometric shapes. we developed our ideas in our visual diaries and made collage cityscapes using colourful paper. You can see these here if you would like to check back.

This term we are developing this theme further by using some geometric stamp shapes I made with a pile of cheap erasers bought from a 'bargain basement $2 shop' (it was even more of a bargain because a pack of 8 cost $1!!!)

I started by demonstrating to the children how to print with the stamps. As they had had some practise making buildings using 2D regular maths  shapes and had created their collage using regular geometric shapes most of them had a very clear idea of what to do.

 

The children then printed onto strips of felt using fabric ink, leaving the washed stamps looking like this! D:

They are now using the short pieces of felt as a sampler to practise stitches on before moving on to embellish their long strip of fabric.


The long pieces once decorated will be folded as shown in the photo to become the pencil case to store their art room equipment in. These should easily last them till the end of  primary school. 

 

*** Here's a tip for anyone trying this at home.
I tried putting the ink under a sponge to make a stamp pad, it did not work very well with the fabric ink and felt. The best way was to give the kids a plate with a spoonful of ink and a paintbrush. They painted the ink onto the 'stamp' and pressed it onto the fabric. This gave a much better result.

Preparing to print!

At last! Every child has their printmaking plate ready to go. There is no swimming lessons, or sport's events or any other excursions - that I know of!  (There's NAPLAN but fortunately not too many class changes as a result!)

 

 First we explored taking a line for a walk (Paul Klee style) then made up 'rules' for taking our lines for a walk creating patterns  that were then used to create designs for printmaking. You can see in Megs visual diary the process we have been through to develop our printmaking plates.

But now I have to go to a meeting to address some changes that need to happen in our school! Fortunately for me the Emily, the lovely lady stepping in to take my class on Monday is also a friend and was able to pop into the Art studio today (Saturday) and I could give her a quick printmaking tutorial - to give her some tips and clearly show her what we are working on. Thanks Emily!

At the same time I did a few colour tests for the children to see how the colours they have chosen will go together. 

I also made up two examples so they could see that their work could be repeated by simply sliding their design ...

OR by rotating the design.

Same printmaking plate - two very different designs.

These pieces of fabric will be decorated using embroidery stitches then transformed into anything the children want to make. I have said I want to see them print on fabric and use threads to decorate the surface of their work other than that it is up to them. Some children will be making pencil cases - if they are new to the school or have lost the ones they have made last year. Others will be making drawstring bags or cushions. One boy suggested coasters to go under hot drinks on the table, another has bought in a T-shirt so he can stitch his finished piece to the front of that.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they all come up with!

Perfect fit.

Our school choir will be attending the massed school choir event later this year. One of the songs relates in some way to M.C.Escher (I'm not sure how but I can't wait to see!) Anyway our music specialist asked if I would introduce Escher to the children. So we have interrupted our normal programme to have a quick look at the beautiful intriguing work of Escher.

I have been showing the classes this video - it's not too long but really demonstrates what Escher was all about and how his work links to mathematics.

Although we have taken a bit of a detour by introducing another artist in the middle of a project it actually works really well, a perfect fit in our current programme. Most classes will be almost ready to start their printmaking project, which will be a simple tessellation of a square tile decorated with lines from our investigation of Paul Klee's work .

Printmaking can be a bit of a messy nightmare in a classroom studio with 28 to 32 kids in a class. SO I have come up with a system that uses printmaking stations and allows kids to focus carefully on the printmaking process without other children around them pressuring them for their turn or making a mess of the printmaking area.I majored in printmaking at uni and am the daughter of an artist who also did a lot af printmaking so I can be a bit fussy with how the printmaking is done! I've seen some teachers just let the kids 'go for it' but I'd rather they learn the process well and the importance of keeping the area clean etc.)

I set up printmaking stations and children go to these to print ( containing the mess to a couple of areas ) I have created a set of numbered cards, each child gets one and this tells them which printmaking station they will go to- red green or blue and the order in which they will go. Once a child has finished printmaking they return their card to me an I call out the next number ; green 4 your turn - a bit like waiting in line at the licensing place or medicare!

While children are waiting for their turn to print they go on with another activity. Sometimes this might be a written component reflecting on their own work so far or responding to an art work by an artist related to the topic we are covering. This time they will be creating their own 'Escheresque' tessellations.

Most children have been creating simple square tessellations where a segment is cut from one side of the square and slid across to the opposite side and taped in place to create a template. Here is video tutorial if you'd like to give it a go at home!

One year 7 boy who was intrigued by the tessellations and wanted to try something a little more challenging so we did a quick search and found this video tutorial on how to create rotational tessellations. It is a step by step how to for a computer and we were trying to do it without the programme using our ruler, pencil and a piece of card. So he and I worked together to try and figure it out - it was a bit tricky and he tried hard to make it work and is going to keep trying at home. It was quite challenging. (I'm glad to say I did manage to figure it out. ) I've included the video just in case you want to challenge yourself and have a go - maybe you have the programme it refers to!

PS.

Today at recess the boy I mentioned and his friend came to show me that they had figured out the rotating tessellation. 

Well done Alex and Amir!

Building on our experiments.

On my most recent trip to Europe I spent a week in London and whilst there I visited the TATE Modern. An afternoon strolling around the Paul Klee exhibition inspired some ideas for lessons this term.

All classes from year three to seven have been focusing on the art work of Paul Klee. my last post showed how we experimented with lines and mark making. The children in year 4-7 have been working on projects based around "taking their line for a walk" (Paul Klee is renowned for saying a line is a dot that went for a walk and drawing is taking a line for a walk.)

The year threes however have looked at a different style of work by Paul Klee where colour and shape is the focus.

 They started by discussing the painting to identify the types of shapes they could see. This was a great opportunity to link maths and art using the terms to describe the geometric shapes or regular shapes that Klee uses in his art works of this type. We compared them to organic or irregular shapes and recorded this information in their visual diaries.

Then came time to play with some 2D maths shapes to construct and record as many different building shapes usiing the simple squares, rectangles and triangles.

 These ideas were then used to create a colourful collage of buildings on a coloured ground.

They finished by making a quick two sentence reflection on their work in their visual diaries. 

 I like how I ...

But I think it would have been even better if I ....

Trust the Process.

The art studio is not all about a final product. The creative process is very important. Often our lessons will involve discussing the work of others (peers, well known or less known artists from different times or different cultures) from these discussions we develop ideas and practise skills before producing an art work. 

Last week has had a big focus on the creative process - playing with mark making tools, exploring what they can do. There was absolutely no expectation to make anything, except interesting marks on paper. Almost every child from year 4-7 loved this activity.

 

 We recorded what we did in our visual diaries, recreating some of the lines and marks we liked most.

Then came the imagination challenge. The children were asked to spend some time looking into all the scribbly marks on the large sheets in front of them to find hidden creatures or plants. There were also recorded into their visual diaries and developed into drawings that showed others more clearly what was in their imagination.

 These ideas will be further developed for use in different printmaking and painting activities inspired also by the work of Paul Klee. Different year levels and different classes will be working on slightly different projects although our starting point is the same.

New year, new ideas.

Well actually some extensions of old ideas. As an artist myself I like to carry and use visual diaries, I have different ones for different reasons, school, house designs, toy ideas or arty ones. The images here are some taken from my recent european holiday.

 

My 'list' of clothes I was going to pack.

 Some ideas for school activities that struck me as I walked through the Paul Klee exhibition at the Tate in London. Art journals are not always pretty and beautiful - sometimes they are notes scrawled quickly so an idea is not forgotten.(The x scrawled there as I was balancing the sketch book with a catalogue and my coat is actually an r! but it was only a quick note to me so it didn't have to be perfect!)

Sometimes I put a sketch book  down and then I am lured by  soft cream pages of a new crisp journal and I abandon the old one as I begin the new. However if I am stuck with out one I feel a bit panicky! Most artists will use a sketch book or note book of some kind to record ideas, make plans, list things they need or want to remember.

I have used visual diaries or journals in the art room for many years now but mostly with the older children. It is not to say that the younger ones didn't make plans or reflect on their work - of course they have, it is an important part of the creative process. Previously they have done this kind of thing on work sheets, scrap paper or good paper, these then often had no names or room numbers added and with large numbers of kids coming through the art room sometimes it is impossible to get them back to the children.
There had to be a better way!

SO this year every child from yr one to seven has bought in a scrap book which will become their visual diary, they will be used in different ways throughout the year but should be a place where students can jeep a record of their creative journey in the art studio.

Now comes the next problem -almost 500 identical scrap books stored in the art studio! That's going to be tricky as the children still haven't cottoned on to the need to put things where they belong... we are getting there. The answer is to create visual diary covers for the scrap books as our first activity.

We looked at the work of Kandinsky and discussed the way he uses shape or colours, our focus was either

designing artworks using shapes - for the junior years using wax resist with a different colour ink for each class,

using a specified shape and mixing a variety of colours - exploring how many different colours you can make while still keeping your colours bright and clear.

Washing your brush carefully between the use of colours and keeping the washing and mixing water as clear as possible, not washing your brush in mud!

And lastly colour mixing but with a focus on different colour families or colour theories on one art work that has been divided up into segments.

I have done something here I rarely do, but as the focus was on colour mixing and creating visual diaries that could be easily identified as part of a class set I felt OK with using a printed Internet colouring sheet for this activity!)