Painting - atmospheric perspective

Term One 2016 - Year 5-6  pupils

Van Gogh inspired landscape paintings

Saw a wonderful idea using Van Gogh's 1889 'Cypress Trees' painting on Deep Space Sparkle using chalk as the painting tool.

My pupils first discussed and compared the painting alongside Van Gogh's 'Starry  Night at St Remy' ...

They then chose to either do a daytime or night time landscape based on the two paintings. We looked at the technique used on the Deep Space Sparkle blog.

Daytime painters used white cartridge paper while the night time painters used black sugar paper. Everyone had access to the same set of paint colours: greens, blues, purple, yellow, orange and brown. 

First we cut out our hills and foothills shapes to glue onto the base paper. 

Then we began painting our skies using chalk dipped in paint and trying to use short strokes and to replicate the swirls and movement of Van Gogh's works...some pupils also chose to try to do a sunset or sunrise sky rather than just a blue daytime sky, while just four pupils chose to try a night-time scene...

Our next step was the hills, thinking about colour choices...

The foreground area was next...

We left the paintings to dry overnight and the next day we cut out tree shapes, glued them into position and painted them...

See all 21 artworks here on the classroom blog.

We discovered that the black sugar paper, being slightly rougher in texture, meant that the chalk would rub onto the paper as well while the paint was stroked on and therefore added shading and texture to the paint strokes, while the white cartridge paper was too smooth to cause the chalk to rub off.  So next time I would try to use sugar paper for all layers of the picture to help with that texture and toning.

Also from Deep Space Sparkle - cool and warm modern landscapes using chalk pastels - something else I would like to try!

Modern 3/4 portraits

Inspiration for these has come via my favourite art blog Deep Space Sparkle and was ideal for beginning our painting art focus for this term. Ours did not turn out as 'true to type' as what was in the DSS lesson but we are really thrilled with the 'modern' look our portraits have taken on!

In the first week of school we wrote 'I am...' poems and I wanted the pupils to paint portraits of themselves; they have always done full-face portraits so agreed they are ready to try a different angle.

We found these images of self-portraits by Van Gogh on Google images:

First we practised the line drawings as advised by Deep Space Sparkle - we used 1/2 A4 and pencils, doing two attempts before then moving onto A4 paper, first with pencil, then with crayons.

Next, we moved onto A3 black paper (the paint colours we will be using are so bright, we think they will look good on the black paper - it will be something different for a change!)  The outlines were done with white chalk (easy to paint over).

We first painted the faces and features. We aimed to be using short brush strokes like Van Gogh used.

Next we painted the background, our focus being to have a mixture of colours, again with the short brush strokes.

Our next step, once the paint was dry, was to add some highlighting detail with black outlines on the main features - we did this with black oil pastels.

Don't they look fantastic?!

Normally I would launch into a painting unit by first working the children through a couple of sessions of brush techniques and colour mixing.  But for this activity I just wanted to get a quick product so we could display them to make the room colourful and it has also given me a baseline to see what the pupils can do.

As we worked I talked about the importance of proportion (ie large paper, so draw the features much larger) and emphasised the correct way to hold a brush, as well as the use of newspaper to clean the brush before getting the next colour (I do not as a rule use jars of water for cleaning brushes while painting).

I did not really have a set criteria - just wanted the children to do what they could.  We will have more specific learning outcomes as the painting  unit progresses.

Batik unit

On A4 size (or similar) paper, draw the design - be sure to keep it simple and with large gaps between lines or sections; this is important because the glue may fill the gaps but you also want plenty of area for the paint.

After drawing over the design with a dark vivid felt pen, tape the corners of the paper to a firm backing eg a board or a flat section of newspaper.  Place a piece of clear foodwrap over the paper and tape this down as well. Next place the piece of cotton cloth over top of the design and tape the corners down also.

Using the bottle of PVA glue, slowly and carefully trace over the design lines - be sure to keep your hand lifted up from the table and to work from left to right (if you are right handed) so you don't rub your hand or wrist over glue that is already on the cloth. (See video... below)



A completed, glued design - this now needs to be left overnight to dry.



When dry, paint inbetween the lines of glue - we used a heat-set textile ink but I think acrylic school paints will work just as good. This is why it is important to have thick lines of glue and large areas inbetween - so the paint has plenty of fabric to stick to and the design will still show up later.





A washed and dried student example - these examples were ironed under a cloth for a few minutes as per the textile ink instructions before being washed in warm water. The second lot of batik were just washed (see examples further down).  These ones were washed in warm soapy water then rinsed with cold water, dried and ironed (under a cloth) - you can see the bright white lines still show up and the paint has not completely washed out.



This example has worked well as the design was simple,with large areas for colour.  Note the paint stains - I think this was from the glue having been heat-set which made it difficult to wash off perhaps?



Another from the first batch.



First batch.



First batch.