2023 - 2024

Creating Ancient Greek Vases (Spring Term)

Within our Ancient Greek learning, we have been exploring the different types of vases they had used, and still find being used today! We looked at the colours and patterns as well as identifying the stories that were told around them. After designing our own, we took to the clay where we were bringing our design to life. We used a variety of moulding techniques, including manipulating, pinching, coiling, press moulding and slip. Once dried, we chose the colours that would have been used in the Ancient Greek era to paint our vases.

Papyrus Paper and Portraits (Autumn Term)

We have been looking into self portraits that were used in Ancient Egypt civilisation when a person was laid to rest, in order to create our own.

First, we sketched our self portrait in our books, ensuring we carefully placed our features in the correct areas on our face. We then focussed on our complexion and the colour of our hair, eyes and lips using a combination of different oil crayons to get the colour as accurate as possible. 

Finally, we needed to create the papyrus paper for us to complete our self portrait: we used brown paper and a mixture of glue and water, with an overlapping technique. It was very messy!

2022 - 2023

Head Sculptures Using Wire (Summer Term)

With our topic focus of Henry VIII and his six wives, we decided to create a head sculpture from wire. First, we looked at photos of Henry VIII and his wives to get an idea of how we would sketch them. We identified the need for different types of shading techniques, such as crosshatching, contour hatching and stippling, to help with the light and dark effects of our sketching. Once we had completed our sketch, we went over the features with a dark pen, ensuring we had a continuous line - this would be the line we would follow with our wire to create the sculpture.

Edvard Munch (Spring Term)

We have been learning about expressional art through the work of Edvard Munch. Taking his famous 'The Scream' painting, we have been looking at how colours can support the portrayal of emotions and expressions.

We know, from our research, that Edvard Munch would choose oil paint or oil pastels to create his pieces. Therefore, we started practising blending a range of media to create the same atmosphere and light effects that Edvard had created.

Observational Drawing of Celtic Shields (Autumn Term)

As part of our 'Bronze to Iron Age - What Changed?' topic, we have been exploring Celtic symbols. We learnt the meanings of the symbols, then tried to identify them within shields. After, we completed an observational drawing by sketching the other half of a shield, using a variety of pencil techniques.

2021 / 2022

World War Two Art Inspired by M.C. Escher

Our focus artist for the summer term was M.C. Escher. We explored his work on tessellations and his creations of parts of an object being transformed into another object. 

James Mayhew Inspired Art (01.03.22)

We enjoyed a visit from James Mayhew, who was sharing his latest book, Once Upon a Tune. We listened to one of the stories about Sheherazade and her 1001 Arabian Nights. We then watched James in action with his painting to the music of Sheherazade. Using James' artwork for inspiration, we chose to sketch a story from the book and then had a go at bringing our sketch to life by painting to the orchestral version of Sheherazade.

Art using Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych (10/12/21)

This half term, we have been focusing on the artist Andy Warhol and his  Marilyn Diptych artwork. Once we had studied his famous piece, we used Andy's Campbell's Soup image to re-create the colour technique (in Marilyn Diptych) using oil crayons. It was then time for us to create our own Christmas design using the Marilyn Diptych as inspiration. Andy Warhol used the technique of screen printing, so it was only right for us to use a printing technique too!