Year 4

Term 1

This term we focussed on making our sketchbooks look individual. We had a lesson all about making spaces and places and learnt how to make pockets in our sketchbooks by folding over a page, add extra pages in different colours and materials, fold large sheets of paper and stick them in to make bigger spaces, cut across our pages to make different shapes and concertinaed long strips of paper and stuck them in.

We then looked at some paintings by Winslow Homer depicting seascapes. We chose 3 paintings each and ordered them from our least to most favourite and wrote notes on what we thought of them. We also thought about 5 words that he might have said about his own work and did some sketches of them.

After that we looked at using paints in a variety of ways to produce different effects. We looked at blending paints and the wet on wet technique to make smooth waters. We also experimenting making crushing waves and creating foam by dapping and flicking the paint onto the page. In the following lesson we had to produce four painted pages each using these different techniques.

Mrs Clarkson showed us a way of creating collages of Viking ships by using wooden effect paper and adding shields, a sail, a head and decorations to our ships. We also used our papers to create a collage of the sea by cutting out waves and layering them over the page. We evaluated our work by talking about if we were happy with the composition and thought about how in the UK we read from left to right and so our eyes will naturally look across the page this way when we look at art so sometimes it looks best to have the object “travelling” towards the right side of the page. We uploaded our work onto Seesaw for a digital display.

Term 2

Year 4 have been learning about Ukrainian graphic designer, Olka Kostenko. She makes her doodle illustrations into clothes and colouring books. The children looked at a selection of clipart pictures that represent the USA and cut out the pictures to create their collages, thinking about whether or not they wanted to overlap some of the pieces.

They then learnt how to do bubble writing and started drawing their images using a pencil around the edge. Once the main pictures were drawn the children drew over the top using fineline pens and added smaller doodles between the pictures like stars and patterns.

The children decided that their pictures looked like pictures that they would see in colouring books and asked Mrs Sweeney if they could turn them into colouring books and sell them. We photocopied their work and the children sold them at the Christmas fete. Jesse said he was really pleased that they sold 77 copies and now everyone in the class is a “real” artist!

Term 3

We looked at an installation by Cornelia Parker and talked about how we thought she made it. We discovered that she asked the army to help her blow up a shed and then she hung all of the pieces around a huge light bulb which created shadows on the walls.

This made us start thinking about collections of different objects so we wrote a list of all the things that could make up a collection. We experimented using them to create shadows using torches and had a go at drawing what we could see. We found drawing the shadows really tricky so the next lesson we watched a video clip about tones and had a go at creating different tones and drawing some objects with shadows.

After that we worked in small groups and painted the inside of a cardboard box white. This was going to become our “room” for our installation. We then chose what our collection was going to be and had to gather up the objects ourselves. We chose things like stationery, maths equipment and art materials. We hung the objects in our boxes to make installations and then used torches to create shadows on the walls. One group even decided to turn their items into an aeroplane which looked fabulous!

Finally, we took photos and/or videos of our installations and we evaluated them, answering the questions on Seesaw.

We decided that if we were going to create another “explosion” we would use lost property and hang it in a tree outside or from the wall bars in the school hall!