Scratch Art UFOs

I still remember a large mural my own class made with this technique when I was around this age - approximately 30 years ago now! : o 

It was super exciting for me and I'm pretty sure these students were equally as excited. I think our class made stars and planets back then, but this lesson was inspired by a Mambo t-shirt of mine featuring some kind of electric guitar playing, rock 'n' roll alien. It was descending from a flying saucer with the caption "Planet Rock!" So I showed this year one class my much loved and well worn shirt and we also looked at some other UFO illustrations.

We spent a full lesson with each student covering their paper in flouro oil pastels - just scribbling thickly everywhere with no deliberate structure. Then they completely painted over this twice with black acrylic paint. Once these were dry everyone was armed with a toothpick and then scratch drew their own UFO scene. It's worth noting the friendly looking aliens they have imagined : )

Plant Life Monoprints

Year 1 made these colourful hexaptychs for the Umina Beach Art Show we held in late August. And yes "hexaptych" is a thing (six panels) – just don't ask me how to pronounce it! 

Each student painted directly onto a piece of board and then scratch-drew their plant inspired image into the wet paint using the wooden tip of their paintbrush. Next the paper was carefully laid onto the paint, lightly smoothed and then peeled off to reveal their monoprint. The process was repeated a number of times and their 6 best prints were chosen for display at the art show. In the past I've done a similar lesson with kindergarten where we made fingerpainted prints, you can see it here.

Vertical Landscapes

Year one made these vertical landscapes in three steps. Initially I led a guided drawing lesson in pencil. Next, the students traced their "good" lines with black markers and did a little erasing. Finally they coloured them any way they chose with watercolour paint.

We had just completed a science unit of work about landscapes, and it seemed only appropriate to attempt this classic art form. I took inspiration from one of Kathy Barbro's many fine lessons on Art Projects For Kids. For any eagle eyes out there, please ignore the missing comma on the class display text!

Recoloured Mondrians II

Reimagining the original. Year 1 drew their vertical and horizontal (ish) lines freehand with black oil pastels, and then used watercolour paints to fill the resulting spaces with any three colours plus white. I've tried this lesson previously with year 5, except they used rulers. You can see their versions here.

Drummers Drumming

Year 1 were very proud of their drummers, and rightly so! We began with a guided drawing lesson in lead pencil, traced the lines in oil pastel and then painted. We also retraced the black outlines after painting. My guided drawing was inspired by some CD cover art by Paula Cox, you can view it here on a previous post.

Unruly Mondrians

Year 1 made these wavy Mondrian-inspired abstractions with black oil pastels and watercolour paints. It's a straightforward lesson but the students enjoyed it, which has to remain a priority — not a lot of learning happens when there's no joy! I've previously tried more regular, ruled Mondrians with year 2 and recoloured Mondrians with Year 5.

Manly Men

Men with facial hair, as illustrated by year one students with charcoal. Some of the technical terms in this very cultured art lesson included beard, goatee and moustache.

This is the first time I can recall ever using or having students use charcoal... Gasps of shock horror from the real art teachers out there - Who is this impostor?! I'm just a regular classroom teacher who likes making art in class, keen but naive : ) So any sagely words of wisdom, must dos and don'ts or other secret tips that you know about using charcoal please let me know in the comments below!

Kandinsky II

Some more pixel paintings inspired by Wassily Kandinsky's Farbstudie Quadrate from 1913. These are of course a collage of many students' work. The pieces immediately above and below are by year 5 and 6 students. Each student was responsible for six shapes. In the above collage, students made all their six shapes the same, whereas below each child used a selection of different shapes. Please click on the images to see the details more closely.

This second set was created by year one students. Each child was responsible for a single shape. The students featured above chose circular shapes like Kandinsky, while the children below used a variety of other shapes. For more information about the process and Mr Kandinsky, please see my previous post here.

Choice Patterns

These patterns, made from complimentary colours plus black and white, were all made by Year 1 students.

Step one in the process: divide the paper in half with a single painted black line. Each child chose whether to halve their paper horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

Step two: paint intersecting straight lines on one half of the paper, and intersecting curved lines on the other side (as many lines as the students wanted, still in black).

Once these were dry...

Step three: choose a colourway from three given combinations (blue & orange, red & green, or purple & yellow). The combinations are all complimentary colours — those which are opposite each other on the colour wheel. Students then painted some (but not all) of the resulting shapes with these two colours.

As often as possible I try to plan for students to make some conscious decisions in their art making. Even though the time and resource constraints of the school setting mean that these options are not often left wide open, they still help to foster ownership and enthusiasm from the children and mean that there is more variety in the resulting art. Every child was asked to make two deliberate choices within this process (how to halve their paper, and which colour combination to use).

The first image above includes all of the students' work. Below are four that you can see a little closer (click on the image to see them bigger again). I know that simple graphic patterns won't be everyone's "cup of tea" — but I love them!

Shiny Bright Flowers

This is first time I've worked with a year one class since beginning this blog. I don't think I used the word with the students, but this was an exercise in minimalism. With an abundance of negative space there's nothing to distract your gaze from these shiny bright flowers.

The children were asked to free-cut without pre-drawing beforehand. Each flower was made with two colours plus greenery. Most of the petals are more geometric than organic in shape but I think this gives the flowers their energetic appearance. Perhaps in a future lesson I'll ask for roughly triangular, rounded or even droopy triangles rather than these more regular ones. It would be interesting to see the effect this would have.