Mary Hanley Catholic School
Objective: Students learn to think visually about the city they live in. They use their imagination to create a city scene. A a group, we talked a lot about what elements make up a city. The rest of the classes were used to explore how these elements could be expressed visually.
Supplies: Scrap paper for initial sketching. The final painting was created on board with sharpies and acrylic paint. Any wet or dry material can work for this project.
For the painting, I focused on teaching the children how to use transparent layering of the acrylic paint.
These kids are busy doing their inital sketching.
First Day
When I first arrived at the school I knew it was going to be a great week. I got to park in the principal’s parking spot since he is out of town. Then the school caretaker and 4 students helped me to unload the car. What service! The school provided me with one room I was able to use for the duration of the project. This is very effective becuase I don't have to cart supplies around from room to room. All day I felt so organized and ready for each new class.
The students were amazing. They had so much enthusiasm and creativity. The layout of each class looked like this:
- Introduce myself and explain my artwork. I brought in 4 paintings to show them.
- What makes up a cityscape painting? Using the whiteboard, a list was made of the kids’ ideas. Buildings were always listed first and trees were always high up on the list.
- Next the children each got a piece of newsprint to sketch their imaginary city.
- They were allowed to sketch anything they wanted to as long as it was a city on earth and not a city from a cartoon.
A message I find to be very important when working with a new group of kids - is IMAGINE don't JUDGE.
"Get your ideas out and focus on what you want to draw and paint, not how well you are drawing and painting. "
If too much pressure is put on young kids to draw well, they start to loose interest in drawing. They become afraid of making mistakes and they don’t want to risk looking ‘silly’ to adults. I try to take as much pressure off of them as possible. It is amazing how much children loosen up once they are given permission to do so.
This student remembered seeing hockey statues in a city.
This Child has demostrated a playful interaction of people and buildings.
Second Day
Today the kids worked on their sheet of hardboard. They had the option to copy the sketching they did on their sheet of paper or to start over. After creating the composition in pencil they went over the lines with sharpies.
We talked about PERSPECTIVE and the different ways to create depth on a piece of paper. Things like overlapping objects to make it look like one is behind the other. Narrowing a street or railway tracks, making posts smaller as they go off into the distance and making signs smaller as they dissapear into the distance.
I asked the children to start thinking about colours and weather so they have some ideas when they start to apply colour tomorrow.
Day Three and Four
The third day with the classes included lessons on how to paint with acrylic paint, how to handle the brushes properly and how to layer transparent washes with acrylic. The kids did a great job working with the new material. Here are some pictures.
I worked with seven different classes from grade 4 to 6. There were many inspired and inspirational pieces done by the children. This is just a small example of what they were able to create. Notice the background wash on most of the paintings.
Great job Mary Hainley! Thanks to all the teachers and school staff for their help.