Fauvist Animal Prints

Animal prints inspired by the art movement Fauvism. This year 5 and 6 class created them with oil and chalk pastels after viewing a collection of Fauvist artworks and recognising their trademark characteristic of strong, exaggerated and often nonrealistic use of colour. The name Fauvism was founded on the French word fauves meaning "wild beasts" (you can read more about the whys and wherefores here).

A little while ago I walked over a concrete path that appeared to have a turtle print stencilled into it's surface, it made me think that some animal prints in nonrealistic colours would be a simple and memorable introduction to Fauvism. The students chose their own colourways and worked directly on the paper with no pencil lines underneath. The animal prints range from truly wild beasts like tigers and leopards, through to zebras, giraffes and the more sedate beasts like cows and even turtles.

Gorillas in the Art Room

A diverse collection of gorillas now stare down from this particular classroom wall – some menacingly so, others wearily or comically. After pencil sketching, the students finalised their line drawing with permanent marker before finishing with watercolours. These magnificent beasts are the handiwork of a talented year 5 & 6 class.

The original, ‘as-per-the-book’ lesson was for the teacher to lead a step-by-step line drawing of an identical gorilla. Instead, I searched online and found several different gorilla drawings to project on the smart board. Some of them were quite realistic while others were more stylised and even cartoonish. The students copied or took inspiration from one or more that either appealed to them or seemed manageable!

It's important to me that as often as I can, I allow the students ‘room to move’ and make their own art. In this case I was asking every student to draw and then watercolour a gorilla up close and personal with a hint of rainforest in the background. I tried to maintain some diversity with the variety of stimuli rather than a single source and made no restrictions on the colours they chose. 

I'm really glad I didn't limit them to realistic colours because blue gorillas look undeniably cool : ) A homage to the Cookie Monster perhaps? But at the same time, if every gorilla was blue they wouldn't look so special... So my ‘soapbox’ opinion for the week is that we should endeavour to include room for at least some individuality within all our art lessons.

Seeing some of the more unrealistically coloured gorillas reminded me of Fauvism and its emphasis on strong colours over representational or realistic ones. Then I noticed that the French origins of Fauvism appear to mean ‘the wild beasts’. In the future I'm thinking of another lesson where we observe some classic Fauvist artworks before creating our own wild beasts with exaggerated and bold colourways. And as per my quest for variety, if I'm dictating the colour scheme then I imagine the art will feature a diverse cast of animals instead. 

Blue Eyes - Green Eyes

These animal all-sorts were inspired by Bob Gill's The Green-eyed mouse and the Blue-eyed mouse. It's a neat story that my wife introduced me to earlier in the year. The art contained therein worked well as a springboard into this lesson, and the story's well worth sharing with children and adults alike. This was a fast paced lesson with the year 5 half of a 5/6 class while year 6 were on an excursion.

Although these were painted it would be quicker and probably just as effective to draw them with permanent markers, but I do like paint... The students made some pencil sketches after observing a few of Bob's understated but endearing animals. Next they painted with regular black acrylic before adding their final blue or green eye colour. I don't think you'll be able to find all these in the wild, captivity or even a fieldguide - but it's great to see something brought to life from the animal kingdom of a student's imagination!