At the moment in Art we are creating self portraits. For the students to make these they have to follow a four step process.
- Trace/Sketch a photo of themselves onto A3 paper
- Practice using finger painting to create bold lines and light shadows using a mixture of the techniques of dabbing and flicking
- Choose appropriate colours and experiment with mixing these to create colours that they believe represent them
- Apply this learning to their paintings in order to create a finger painted self portrait
One of the Art topics that all of the students in my class did last year was creating a still life finger painting that represented either a single flower or a group of flowers. They have all previously done work on complimentary colours and learnt the techniques of dabbing and flicking.
When I mentioned to a student today that I could see the effort that he was putting into flicking with the right amount of pressure to create the effect of shadow, the learning conversations that took off around what they learnt last year and how they could apply it to their new style of art were incredible. The quality of their artwork instantly improved also as they all wanted to make improvements on their work from last year.
I guess that the learning that I have from this at the start of a new school year is the importance of providing the students the opportunities to connect their new learning with previous learning in order to develop their understanding of a topic. This is something that is always on any teacher's mind but the importance of it was definitely highlighted today for me. A beautiful reminder at the start of what is promising to be a wonderful year!
Below are a couple of photos of my students at the first two stages of this process.
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