Grassy Scene with Insects
Once again I had the pleasure of teaching the senior students sgraffito and collage techniques for their calendar art fundraiser. Lizzie’s Year Five and Six class joined me today to make a scene of vibrant insects nestled in long grass. Later on in the year families will have the opportunity to order cards, diaries, sketchbook and calendars with their child’s beautiful artwork on it.
The students also glazed their ceramic art from earlier in the year. I will fire their ceramics in the kiln over the next few weeks. The kids are all super excited to see what their artworks will look like after the final firing
I modelled both of the main components of today’s artwork for the students and then they chose in which order they would like to complete the work. One task was to prepare the grassy green background. They did this by by painting the entire page in yellow and then layering two different greens over top. They then used the paint scrapers to add another layer of texture. Later on in the day the students glued ripped pieces of green paper on top to make wavy, textured grass.
The second piece of art was a variation on on the pottery technique, sgraffito. Sgraffito means ‘to scratch’ in Italian. It is the process of adding glazes to pottery and then scratching them off to reveal contrasting colours, patterns and textures underneath. The students coloured their paper with warm coloured pastels, working hard to fill in the white spaces. Next they painted black acrylic paint over top. I like to add a drop of dishwashing liquid to the black paint to help it scratch off easier.
The students looked at images of garden insects and drew plans for their own critters. Some students imagined brand new species, others did observational drawings of real mini-beasts. The finished artworks are lovely an all-in-all it was a very productive day in the art room. I am very pleased with the wonderful effort the students put in to completing not one but two artworks today.
