This term the focus for our reception to year 6 classes is on drawing! Here’s what we’ve been up to in the first week…

Maroon & Turquoise Class

Our reception, year 1 and year 2 artists investigated cave paintings this week. We practised different techniques using charcoal, which would have been one of the materials available to early artists. We replicated the hand art seen on cave walls by placing our hands onto the paper and smudging charcoal around them. We made the paper have a more cave-like texture by crumpling it up before we worked! We then drew cave art style representations of animals and people, and thought about the stories our pictures were portraying.

Amber, Magenta & Violet Class

Our year 3 and 4 artists worked on a series of exercises to help them to focus on looking closely at objects and drawing them accurately. We looked at our chosen objects for 30 seconds before hiding them and drawing them from memory. We then repeated the task, this time looking at the objects for one minute and concentrating on the shapes, lines and forms we could see before creating a more accurate drawing from memory. We completed some contour drawings of the objects then produced our final drawings, building on the skills we’d practised.

Jade & Emerald Class

Our year 5 and 6 artists worked on developing their observational skills too. We followed similar tasks to those done by the year 3 and 4 groups as a warm up, then spent the second half of the session working on our final drawings. As well as aiming to reproduce the shape accurately, we considered texture, tone and light source in our drawings.