My teaching of visual arts previously focused on one artist such as Picasso, Monet, or Van Gogh. I realised that I was presenting a narrow view of arts. So, instead I focused on four artists, with very different styles: Joan Mitchell, Katsushika Hokusai, Margaret Preston, and Claude Monet.
This was highly successful, with students particularly enjoying producing abstract art.
Hook/Stimulus- What is art?
Click here for more resources regarding art hooks/stimulus.
How art has changed…
- How has art changed?
- What do you notice about the different styles of art?
Students can work with a partner to order these pictures in the order they think the artworks were created. Students can then look at the artwork timelines websites and reflect/compare their predicted art timeline with the ones on the websites.
Art timeline
- https://www.identifythisart.com/timeline-of-art-history/
- https://www.theartstory.org/section_movements_timeline.htm
Joan Mitchell: Focus on the abstract expressionist style
About Joan Mitchell:
Videos introducing abstract art techniques:
Student Focus: As a class, we watched the above videos of artists painting in the abstract style. I gave students paint brushes, plastic knives, cotton balls and paper to use to spread paint- students could select the materials they used. The focus was on being expressive.
Katsushika Hokusai: Focus on the style of Japanese art (pure, bright colour and images in their simplest form)
About Hokusai:
Student focus: creating a landscape in its simplest form, painting with ‘flat’ colour, only adding back or white to colours (not mixing colours).
Margaret Preston: Focus on still life art
About Margaret Preston:
- https://nga.gov.au/preston/essay.cfm;
- http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/sub/preston/artist.html
- http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/preston-margaret-rose-8106
Student focus: Students had experience creating still life artwork, including drawing:
- flowers: plastic flowers bought from a ‘cheap’ shop or real flowers
- bowls of fruit: each table group had a plastic bowl with three pieces of fruit
- tea cup and saucer: ‘old fashioned’ looking tea cups bought from a second hand shop.
Extension: students could have experience creating still life artwork in a different style, eg. cubist
Student Focus: cubist, angular, non-realistic shapes of fruit. Option: students could use one continuous line, from one side of the page to the other to divide the composition into sections.
Picture book stimulus for cubist art (also a suitable stimulus for other non-realistic artistic styles): “Luke’s way of looking” by Nadia Wheatley
Monet: Impressionist brush stroke technique
About Monet:
- https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/claude-monet
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Monet
Introducing impressionist techniques:
Student focus: As a class, students watched the videos introducing the impressionist technique. Students then created landscape paintings with a focus on using short brushstrokes, building up and mixing the colour on the page, not having ‘flat’ colour.
Surrealism
Stimulus book: “If…” by Sarah Perry
Stimulus images
About Surrealism
Possible activities:
- Brainstorm nouns and verbs, write them on pieces of paper and put them into two bowls (one for nouns and one for verbs). Students pull out one noun and one verb, eg. worms (noun), driving (verb). These nouns and verbs shouldn’t be related/realistic, eg. ‘baby’, ‘sleeping’. Students then create artworks which combine their two words.
- Have containers with different classifications of words, eg. animal, place, food, object, landscape. Students choose three words and combine them in a drawing.
- Give students 20 photos. They need to combine 3 of them to create a surrealistic artwork.
- Mixed media surrealism, see instructions and examples: in ‘Surrealism slide show’ http://emilyjanevalenza.com/art-history/
- Surrealist Portraits: Click here for pdf lesson plan
Educator Resources by The Dali Museum: https://thedali.org/programs/education-2/
Surrealism slide show: http://emilyjanevalenza.com/art-history/
Introducing Art Vocabulary
Introducing students to a range of art styles and techniques:
Large-scale art installations
Yayoi Kusama https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-yayoi-kusama
Chiharu Shiota http://www.chiharu-shiota.com/en/
Art & Technology
https://www.andreaswannerstedt.se/about
Paris Digital Art Museum
Sculpture- Benjamin Shine
Drawing cities from memory- Stephen Wiltshire
Bubble wrap canvas- Bradley Hart
Great Young Artists
Kareem Waris Olamilekan: Young Nigerian artist inspired by the artists Michelangelo and Arinze Stanley Egbengwu.
Aelita Andre: 9-year-old abstract painter
Elisabeth Anisimow: 11-year-old child prodigy paints and sells ‘living art’. She paints a living person along with a backdrop and props. Click here for more information.
Victoria Yin and Zoe Yin: sisters and artists from Boston.
Click here for examples of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.
Click here for a range of artworks for students to respond to.
Other Resources:
How to look at art by the Art Gallery of South Australia
Why look at art?
Lots of art resources, including: lessons, art history, art techniques and more. Good resources for both confident and beginner art teachers:
http://emilyjanevalenza.com/techniques/
Collaborative picture: website cuts up a given picture, each student can colour part and then the pieces can be put together to make one large picture/artwork.
https://www.blockposters.com/?fbclid=IwAR3VIsZTNrJob0pXQfiX6u6Yz8WoIAgGPZKxJPqrLqVyfTxXCDI2OaDpKbw
List of artists, grouped by theme/subject
https://theartyteacher.com/artists-themes/
Brianna Laxton 