Battyeford Primary Art, Craft & Design: March 2015

Prince Twins Seven Seven - Year 2 Inspired

Our Year 2 artists have been working on a project inspired by African Landscapes and the work of Artist Prince Twins Seven Seven. Prince Twins Seven Seven sadly passed away in 2011, he was a musician, sculptor and painter influenced by traditional Yoruba mythology and culture, and created a fantastic universe of humans, animals,plants and Yoruba gods.

First our pupils looked at African Landscapes in a colour mixing and mark making project, we worked in pairs to make large scale backgrounds painted with powder paints, acrylics and overdrawn with oil pastels.

Next we tested our non standard drawing tools (match sticks, lollipop sticks, cotton wool buds and cocktail sticks) using a limited palette of inks in response to Prince Twins Seven Seven artworks in our sketchbooks. The children found this quite tricky, working on a small scale and with fiddly tools...however once they got over their initial hesitancy they really began to thrive. Here is some of the sketchbook work.

After this the children traced over animal images and cut out white silhouette animal shapes. They looked again at the work of Prince Twins and captured some of the patterns within their animal shapes, working once again with the non standard mark making tools.

Finally the Year 2 pupils collaged the animal images over the landscape backgrounds, whilst using the same techniques, their choices re backgrounds, patterns, mark making and shapes were independent and striking. Here are some of the end results...

Along the way we have also self evaluated using the NSEAD new curriculum (slightly tweaked) linked to 'I Can' statements. These are broken down in to Generating Ideas, Making, Evaluating and Knowledge. The statements are selected from an overall teacher tracker linked to their specific project. The pupils use this evaluation early on in the project and then again at the end, their traffic lights are dated.

A successful scheme...Well done Year 2!

David Hockney Inspired - Environments (Water)

Year 5 have been looking at the theme of Rivers and Water. In Art, Craft and Design we have taken our inspiration from the Malibu 1980's seascapes and landscapes by David Hockney, one of Britain's best known contemporary artists. Over Hockney's career he has often been inspired by the landscape and his visual ideas have sometimes spread in to design for Opera stage sets. This notion of creating 'environment' from 2D imagery has been explored in class by creating forms that provide a relief element to our finished artworks. The pupils ideas have been amazing and some really sophisticated results are emerging as we come near to completing these images.

First of all we tested ideas relating to Hockney's colour, form, pattern and texture in our sketchbooks...

Next we worked on A4 card backgrounds with inks, oil pastels and felt tip pens to create a random pattern with inserts of patterns/marks inspired by Hockney's landscapes and seascapes.

These were then blown up on the photocopier to A3. Now the student had an A3 colour copy and an A4 original from which to form their environments. The hardest part was adjusting the card backgrounds to marry with the already prepared sheets, continually adding more decorated, inked and drawn sections to work alongside their imagery. Here are some pictures showing us working as we developed this approach...

We are nearing completion and the finished works are really something...shall we develop now with photography or build something larger??? The children may decide... Take a look at our work so far. We think it is stunning! Well done Year 5!