Year 5

Term 1

We started off the topic by comparing paintings by artists Van Gogh and Hockney. We looked at the similarities and differences between their work, thought about how the paintings made us feel and recorded our thinking on Venn diagrams, working with a partner. We then started looking at how to control and experiment with particular qualities of tone (whether a colour is warm/cold, bright/dull, light/dark or pure/dirty), shades (adding black to a colour) and hue (colours).

We considered how we could create a painting based on David Hockney’s Garroby Hill. We watched a video that talked about perspective, patterns and composition and used this to help us to paint our own Garroby Hills.

We then used what we had learnt to draw a selection of different compositions thinking about the rule of thirds. We looked at them in small groups and talked about what went well and how we could improve them and then we painted these thinking about the types of colour and pattern that Hockney used in his work.

Finally, we evaluated our work in small groups and took photos so that we could present our work online for our parents to see.

Term 2

This term Year 5 have been looking at galaxy art by painter Cathrin Machin. Machin produces stunning paintings based on images from the Hubble Space Telescope. She spends thousands of hours on each painting. We discussed the kinds of things we would need to learn to be able to do our own galaxy painting and followed a tutorial which showed us how to create galaxies using watercolour paint, watercolour paper, paint and white gel pens.

We then thought about other things that we might find in space such as planets and astronauts. We looked at photos of planets and drew planets using chalks. We also looked at clipart pictures of astronauts and used black pens to draw our own astronauts. We cut out the astronauts and the planets.

After that we played around with the composition by moving the objects around and decided where to place them on the page. We stuck them down and evaluated our work, thinking about what went well and what we would like to improve next time.

Term 3

Year 5 have been learning about the work of designer William Morris. They created pages in their art books all about him and then sketched their own designs using lots of leaves, flowers and birds as he was inspired by the natural world.

Once they had created a design they copied them onto 20x20cm squares and created a collagraph by adding string and other collage materials to create texture. Once they were completed the children learnt how to do relief painting using their collagraphs. They had a go at doing one colour and then learnt how to use two colours, thinking about if they wanted to use complementary colours (colours which are opposite each other on a colour wheel) or analogous colours (colours which are next to each other on a colour wheel).

Some of the children then had a go at making a repeating design for a wallpaper design which they then transferred onto a drawing of a room with a feature wall.