An Australian Starry Night

Hollie (Yr 3)

The Starry Night is an iconic Van Gogh painting that we've used as inspiration for our art this week. When I recently saw this free lesson download at The Art of Education, I couldn't resist doing our own version.

Looking at the real deal on WikiPaintings, we especially made note of the dark detailed foreground and Van Gogh's swirling interpretation of the wind (or space) around the stars.We created our sky by drawing lots of movement lines with white and blue Crayola Color Sticks on purple paper. We then drew our foreground on a 3/4 sheet of black contruction paper and then traced over all our lines with either silver or gold sharpies before cutting it out and gluing it onto the purple sheet.

Students had complete freedom in creating their foregrounds, within the Australian theme. They produced a wide variety of settings, including bush scenes with gum trees and koalas, Ularu, the Sydney Opera House and (closer to home) the Mooloolaba Spit with it's lighthouse and water tower.

The final step was to create our stars using eraser-tipped pencils dipped into red, yellow, white and orange paint to create a variety of star-like patterns. The challenge was to try to make each star different!

This is a great lesson to illustrate the difference between copying other's art, and using it as an inspiration.

The kids produced some fabulous work on this project, I just love them!!

Cool Street-Art Style Lettering

Emma W (Yr 4)

After discussing the difference between Street Art and vandalism (!) we played with iconic letter-writing styles that are instantly associated with street art, even when done on paper.

I've used this activity as a half lesson (the other half being used to paint our Coil Snake Pots). Although I would have liked more time, and some kids didn't quite get finished (after the first group I switched to monograms), they have still done great work. This is a technique that they can re-work and use in lots of applications in their independent art work.

Thank you Natalie at smART Class for great easy-to-follow directions!

More Australian Native Animals

Kangaroo - Charlotte K (Year 2)

Emu - Tia C (Year 2)

Turtle - Mayah K (Year 5)

Platypus - Estelle T-F (Year 3)

Koala - Murray L (Year 2)

Cassowary - Oscar N (Year 2)

Platypus - Makedde C

Koala - Toby G (Year 2)

Echidna - Jay PO (Year 2)

Wallaby - Kyla R (Year 4)

More Australian native animals, drawn and painted using some traditional Australian Aboriginal designs and techniques. Click here to view details of how we created these great pictures.

Australian Native Animals

Emu

Turtle - April K (Year 5)

Turtle - Jakobe C (Prep)

My Hand - Abby K (Year 4)

Crocodile - Kiefer C (Year 2)

Platypus - Sascha B (Prep)

Crocodile - Kira R  (Year 5)

Kangaroo - Alex A S (Year 2)

Platypus - Bronte B (Year 3)

Indigenous Australian art is rich in tradition, texture and earth colors. Often depicting stories from the Dreamtime, the art style incorporates the use of many media and techniques including dot and x-ray painting, rock and bark painting, sculpture and fibre arts to name just a few.
This week we've explored just a small part of this rich culture, looking at examples of paintings of native Australian animals by indigenous artists using the dot and x-ray techniques.

After discussing color, texture and pattern, we used white color sticks on colored paper to first draw our animals in outline. We then thought about where we thought the internal organs of the animal might be, and drew them in with lots of pattern. It is important that our lines are drawn very firmly.
From there we considered the background patterns of our pictures, using flowing lines to divide the background into interesting shapes.

We then added more color in linear pattern or  solid blocks of color. I didn't restrict the student's use of color at all, but did talk to them about the effectiveness of a limited color palette.

Finally, students used the ends of paint brushes dipped in white acrylic to carefully apply dots of white along the major lines of their backgrounds and, if they chose, around their animals.

Hippopotomi

Caillou C-F (Year 4)

Abby G (Year 3)

Alexander K (Year 2)

Ary C (Year 5)

Charlotte Y (Year 5)

Daniel O (Year 1)

Georgia S (Prep)

Ella P (Year 2)

Harry O (Year 3)

Laura A (Year 2)

Lucinda T (Year 5)

Luke B (Year 2)

Maddison P (Year 2)

Summah H (Year 2)

Aren’t hippos the most wonderful  art subjects? For these pictures we’ve used color sticks thickly on blue paper, and the results are fantastic. My young artists had a choice between drawing their hippos with fish and river plants (adapted from a collage idea on Deep Space Sparkle, with thanks) or from a high perspective as though looking through the thick forest at the river below (inspiration from Philadelphia Zoo Hippo Art). Others made up their own interpretation, and they all looked spectacular when they’d finished!

Picasso-style Roosters (and Other Birds)!

Jakobe C (Prep)

Ashli M (Year 2)

Caela NN (Prep)

Candice N (Year 6)

Charlie S (Year 2)

Demi B (Year 2)

Murray L (Year 2)

Teddy H (Year 2)

Crayola color sticks on black paper. Have I mentioned that I love using these? The colors are brilliant and they work terrifically on black and colored paper, as well as white. This piece started out as a rooster (that was the guided lesson I did anyway), but of course many of the kids had their own ideas…. and what a fabulous job they did too!

Pop Art in the style of Burton Morris

Bella G (Year 6)

Fatima M (Year 2)

James R-S (Year 5)

Juliana K (Year 1)

Kane B (Year 2)

Kristen C (Year 7)

Mackenzie R (Year 2)

Shaun H (Year 5)

Tajah G (Year 3)

Zoe B (Year 2)

We loved looking at examples of Burton Morris’ explosive Pop Art. We created our own with Crayola color sticks (the best thing since sliced bread!) and cut paper. Thanks Donna Woodrow on Artsonia for a great idea. The kids loved it!