This Term
This month at Art Club
Over the past few weeks we have been exploring lots of different creative techniques at the request of the children. Canvas painting was a project that spanned over two weeks, we explored how to create a painting with acrylic paint. The children all picked their own inspiration pictures of things they loved and wanted to capture artistically.
We started by sketching the layouts of their pictures onto their canvases and speaking as a group about colour choices and how they could stylise their paintings.
The kids are very good at sharing their work with each other and helping eachother make choices, its such a supportive environment!
Acrylic paint is a very different type of paint to work with so we worked on how to build a pallete of colours and colour mixing using the colour wheel. Once we had all got their paints selected they were off! Some used the easels and others had it flat on the table, its always so interesting to see how they all work differently and still have such amazing expressive results at the end. There’s definitely not just one way of creating and the kids prove that every week!
In the second session of canvas painting we focused on adding the final details after their work from the week before had dried. After having a week away from their canvases they were excited to get back into the painting and complete their work. We focuses a lot of adding light and shade to their paintings. To really make the details pop!
We even had one Art Club member elect to enter his completed painting into a competition at school, so we are wishing him all the luck! It takes a lot of confidence to enter your work into a competition so we are very proud!
The kids had done so well with sitting and really focusing on the details of their canvas painting, I decided to go for an expressive session to get them up on their feet and let them explore the world of abstract art on larger scale. They worked in groups to create large scale mixed media pieces using paint, chalk, oil pastels, pencil and pens. It was such a joyful session where they explored shapes, patterns, colours and working as a team to make an end result they were all happy with.
They took breaks to look at each others results and compliment one another. Swapping ideas and techniques on how they achieved certain effects on their paintings.
This month we had world book day and the group expressed an interest in having a session based on books. So we had an Art club book day! The kids brought in their favourite books and brought in some books that have beautiful illustrations in them. This sessions goal was to redesigned the covers of the books they chose. Some wanted to learn how to draw in the illustration style of the books they chose, so we sat and went step by step on some of the drawings they selected. It was a very interesting and fun to explore a different style of drawing with them away from the realism style. Some wanted to work in 3D and bring the characters to life!
This has inspired this comings week session of working in 3D through using papier-mache ready to decorate after the Easter holidays! This will definitely be a fun one!
Another amazing month at AJ Art Club, its always such a joy to see how their creative confidence grows week by week. They don’t say they can’t do something, they give it a go straight off that bat and that’s what we are all about!
