Works of art can be a rich stimulus for children's learning, and reproductions are now easy to obtain. A painting can arouse young children's natural curiosity and provide many opportunities for them to learn about the power of the visual image. By encouraging their questions and developing their observational skills, children will gain a deeper insight into both the subject matter and the art of making pictures.
Below are three arts projects, which show how to introduce works of art to children and develop their painting and drawing techniques.
The world of colour
This project can be based on 'Personnages Oiseaux II' by Joan Miro on the Nursery World poster, or any abstract art which shows colour and different uses of paint, such as Jackson Pollack paintings.
Intended learning
Children will learn to:
* make secondary colours using the hot and cold sets of primary colours
* use colour names
* recognise properties of paint, such as thick, thin and runny
* use large mark-making tools
* use different painting techniques
* work collaboratively.
Resources
* Double primary set of ready-mixed paint (hot set: brilliant blue, brilliant yellow and vermillion; cold set: Prussian blue, lemon and crimson) plus black and white
* Palettes
* Mark-making tools including household paintbrushes (assorted sizes), round hogs bristle or flagged nylon brushes (assorted sizes), flat flagged nylon brushes (assorted sizes), foam brushes (assorted sizes), foam rollers (assorted sizes), foam mop-head brushes, spatulas and stencil brushes
* Pipettes and droppers
* Tools for dragging through paint, such as scrapers (plastic and cardboard), combs (plastic and made), tile cement or grout spreaders
* Large sheet or sheets joined together of heavy-duty white or neutral coloured paper.
Introducing the work of art
Ask the children:
* What colours can they see in the painting? Clarify, affirm or introduce new colour names.
* Have they a favourite colour? Is it in the painting?
* Do they know how the picture was made? Has the artist used paper, crayons, chalk, paint?
* Is the paint thick or thin? How has the artist applied the paint - with a brush or sponge, or dribbled on?
What to do
* Inform the children that they are going to make a big picture together. Only two to four children will be able to work on the picture at one time, but everyone will get a turn.
* Explain that the picture is going to focus on colour and the tools used to apply or drag colour. Explain that they will be able to make marks in many different ways, and that the end result will not feature plants or animals or people but will look like one big pattern.
* Remind the children to use only primary colours. They will need the double set of primary colours to make the full range of other colours they require. Blue and yellow make green. However, different tones of green can be made with the hot and cold sets. Red and blue do not always make purple. Sometimes you get what the children call a 'yucky' brown. You need a cold crimson red to make bright purple.
* Put the black and white paint to one side. If black is available from the outset, the children are bound to use it and saturate all their colours with it and everything will end up the same colour.
* Demonstrate how to hold and use the tools. (Do this on a separate sheet of paper, not the ones for the children's painting.)
* Talk to the children about the different marks and surfaces that are created by using the tools and ask them to describe them. Can they remember which tool made which mark?
* Explain that eventually all of the paper is going to be covered and that they can make marks over or through other children's marks. For example, they might drag a scraper through a track of paint made by someone else, or dribble paint from a pipette over someone else's sponged marks.
* Colours will blend as the children work on the picture, but you can demonstrate how to mix the colours before they are applied.
* When all the white paper is covered, introduce the white paint. Encourage some children to use the white by itself and others to mix it with the existing colours.
* Reserve the black until the end. Allow just one or two children to do the odd mark making here and there. Any more than that and they will cover up everyone else's hard work.
Winter
For this project, you will need a picture or poster of 'A Scene on the Ice Near a Castle' by Henderick Avercamp (1585-1634).
Intended learning
The children will learn to:
* look for detail
* respond to questions and comments
* begin to differentiate between the past and present
* learn to make conjectures based on what they see and already know
* express their thoughts, ideas and feelings
* use colour and pattern in their picture making.
Resources
* Good quality paper cut into a circle (there could be a range of different sizes in both black and white paper)
* Drawing media including graphite pencils and graphite sticks, coloured pencils, fibre-tipped pens (different sizes and colours), crayons, chalks, pastels (oil and non-oil), charcoal (compressed, willow and charcoal pencils), Biros.
Introducing the work of art
Tell the children that you want them to become detectives by looking carefully at the picture. Explain that you are going to ask lots of questions to find out how much they have noticed. Allow them a reasonable amount of time to look at the painting, then ask:
* When was the picture painted - autumn, spring, summer or winter? What makes them think this?
* What are the people doing? How are they dressed? Why do their clothes look different from ours?
* Can they find a child about to throw a snowball, a horse and sleigh, a man helping a woman tie her ice boots, a couple falling down?
* Which building do the children think is the castle?
* How many birds can be seen in the tree? Can they find the bird in the sky? How many birds are there altogether?
* Can they find a boat flying a (Dutch) flag?
* Can they see the artist's name? Draw their attention to his initials on the bottom of an old tree stump. Look how he has placed the A through the middle of the H.
(You may also wish to point out the age of this picture and remind them of the dangers of playing on ice.) What to do
* Explain to the children that they are now going to make their own winter pictures, and like Avercamp's, they are going to be circular.
* Remind the children that Avercamp's picture was made a long time ago (nearly 400 hundred years ago) and that their pictures will look different.
* Ask what clothes people wear nowadays to keep them warm in the ice and snow. What games do they play? Who might be in pictures nowadays?
* Avercamp's picture has trees, buildings and people, so suggest that the children include these in their pictures.
* Show the children the range of materials available and remind them how they 'work'. Refer to how they have used the materials in the past. For example, do you remember that the graphite sticks give us thick black lines, the oil pastel blends, and we can use the crayons to fill in large areas of colour?
* Encourage the children to include lots of details, for example, patterns on clothes or the texture of a tree trunk.
* When the pictures are completed, ask the children to write their initials somewhere in the foreground.
Water
The focus for this project is 'Bathers at Asnieres' by Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891), painted in 1884 and appearing on the Nursery World poster.
Intended learning
The children will learn to:
* look for detail
* respond to questions and comments
* learn to make conjectures based on what they see and know
* express their thoughts, ideas and feelings
* explore different painting techniques
* use colour and texture in their picture making.
Resources
* Powder paints (hot set: brilliant blue, brilliant yellow and vermillion; cold set: Prussian blue, lemon and crimson; and white)
* Pots (for mixed paints)
* Palettes
* Mark-making tools including brushes (assorted sizes), foam rollers (assorted sizes), stencil brushes and spatulas
* Chalk (preferably a light colour such as lemon)
* Cold-water paste powder (for thickening paint)
* Sawdust or sand (for adding texture to paint)
* A2 or A3 sheets of good quality paper.
Introducing the work of art
Ask the children:
* How many people can they see in the picture? (Don't forget to count the people in the boat)
* What are they doing and where are they?
* What are they wearing? Why do they have hats on? What's the weather like?
* Can the children point out the shadows?
* What's in the background of the picture? Can the children find a railway bridge, factories, smoking chimneys, trees and bushes, and sailing boats?
* Why have the people gone into the river? (Point out the dangers of rivers!)
* Why do they think the man in the river is putting his hands to his mouth? What is it like getting into cold water after being hot in the sun?
* Have they spotted the dog? Who does it belong to?
* Which colour paints has Seurat used?
* What colours are the water and grass? Point out that the water is not all blue and the grass has different tones of green as well as other colours.
* Can the children find dots and marks of colours?
What to do
* Ask the children when and where it is safe for them to play with or in water and list the activities. (Reinforce that playing in the swimming pool, by the sea or near a river must always be supervised.)
* Suggest painting one of the activities, for example, fishing with mummy or swimming with daddy. The children need to think what will be in their picture.
* Tell them that they are going to place the people in their picture last of all. At this stage they need to draw only the background/landscape. Ask them to draw their picture in chalk. (If the preliminary drawing is made in pencil, the children include too much fine detail and become frustrated when trying to paint it.)
* Work with up to four children. Ask what colours they will need for their pictures. Refer to the colours used by Seurat. Mix the paints to the required colours. Make different tones of colours in different pots - for example, different greens by adding more or less blue or yellow. Mix a good quantity of each colour as the children will be painting with rollers and sponges that soak up paint. Talk about what is happening.
* Explain to the children that they are going to make their painting in three stages: first painting the background, then (when dry) overpainting details and finally placing the people in the picture. Explain that initially they will not be painting with brushes, but with tools such as rollers and sponges.
* Ask the children to consider their choice of colours when overpainting the background. For example, they might first apply one tone of blue with a roller to create the water. Then encourage them to use sponges, spatulas and fingers to overpaint different tones of blue, green or white. This is a time when paste and sawdust come in handy for adding texture to the paint.
* When the painting has dried, encourage the children to work in a similar way to paint the people and other details. They could use chalk on top of their background or draw their characters on another piece of paper, cut them out and attach them as collage figures. They might like to use a brush to paint a person, but encourage them to add patterns using their fingers, spatulas or stencil brushes as they did with the background.