Kate & Zara's Ocean Collage

So proud of Kate and Zara!

The girls are in year 6, and graduating to High School next year. They approached me last term, wanting to develop and deliver their own lesson. Of course I agreed, and I know they have been working hard on their concept ever since.

So today is the Big Day! and the girls have presented a lovely under ocean collage picture for the class. We started with a wet-on-wet watercolour wash, textured with salt, while the bottom half of the page became the sandy sea bed with glue and beach sand.

From there we developed a variety of shells and sea creatures using a wide choice of materials including corrugated cardboard, tissue paper, construction paper, cartridge paper and oil pastels.

Thank you Zara and Kate, for a well thought out project, with lots of opportunity for individual creative interpretation, yet nicely structured to ensure a successful result from everyone!

Hollie

Robots & Donuts (Inspired by Eric Joyner)

Eric Joyner is an amazing contemporary American artist who has developed a running theme of Robots and Donuts in his art. 

Eric Joyner 'Robot R & R'

The juxtaposition of these unlikely elements, handled in an otherwise realistic manner, is quite surreal. 

After admiring several examples of his work, we set out to create our own 'Robots and Donuts' pieces using black marker and watercolour pencil.

Chelsea

Beautiful Bubbles

A bit of fun this week creating a bubbly background for our underwater creatures.

This is a technique that could be used very effectively to make beautiful paper for a variety of uses including torn-paper collage, scrap-booking or simply as an interesting textured background, as we have used it in this project.

After looking at some beautiful jellyfish inspiration pictures many children chose a jellyfish theme, while others elected to draw other sea creatures. We  blew bubbles in a strong solution of watercolour and dish liquid before capturing them on the paper. Messy, but loads of fun and very effective!

We finished with soft pastel, blurring and blending the pastel inwards to maintain the transparency of our jellyfish. Many of the children blurred their oil pastel outwards instead, creating a wonderful 'glow' around their creatures.

Beautiful!

Indi

Falling .... Just Fooling!

Our last lesson of the term, and we've been busy experimenting with more optical illusions.

Kate

Op Art (or Optical Art) uses line, contrast and often very precise mathematical composition to 'trick' the eye so that the viewer perceives different visual effects such as movement, warping, swelling or even hidden images.

What Do You See?

Zoe

This week we've ventured into the world of optical illusion. Our inspiration is the famous 'Rubin Vase' illusion, published in 1915 by psychologist Edgar Rubin.

Fantastic Foil Figures

I love the children's action figures which they crafted with aluminium foil over a pipe-cleaner armature. We have dancers, gymnasts, super heroes and basketball players ...... even a few mermaids!

This is a very challenging project, and the children have all done so well. Mounted onto a metallic oil-pastel background, our foil action figures are so expressive, and look fantastic!

Ruby's 'Mermaid on a Rock'