Explosion at the bottle factory

This lesson is designed to help explain the idea of Abstract art. It is from an Arts and Activities magazine.

Paintings of trees by the Dutch painter Piet Mondriaan show the development of realistic painting to abstract painting clearly. The red tree (1908) is a realistic painting, Mondriaan painted what he saw.

The grey tree (1911) is more abstract, but the shape of the tree can still be seen.

The apple tree (1912) doesn't look like a tree anymore, unless you see this one together with the former paintings.

You need:

1. black construction paper
2. scissors and glue
3. coloured paper
4. ruler and pencil

After showing the paintings of Mondriaan, kids have to make their own abstract artwork out of a realistic one. Children draw a line halfway their black sheet. Then they have to cut three or four double bottles out of coloured paper. Glue the bottles on the top piece of the black sheet. Cut the remaining bottles into pieces and glue them on the bottom of the sheet.

Autumn prints

You need:

1. pieces of linoleum from 15 x 15 cm
2. lino knife
3. mat
4. block printing ink
5. flat piece of plexiglass
6. linoleum roller
7. construction paper
8. lino press

After searching autumn leaves and taking them in the classroom, we take a careful look. What can you tell about the form, the veins, the colour etc.
Draw a leave or mushroom on your linoleum. Remember what you cut away will not print. It is not important to carve deeply into linoleum, just enough so that carved area is lower than the linoleum surface. Always carve away from your hand, always keep your hand behind the back edge of linoleum. When you want to check your printing block, place a piece of paper on the linoleum and rub over the paper with a crayon. This will create a “rubbing” and will give you an idea of what the final print will look like. Squeeze out “toothpaste” amount of ink on plexiglass. Roll ink out. Ink is ready when lines appear. Ink should look wet. If ink starts to look velvety/dry, sprinkle a little bit of water over the ink and add more ink. Put your linoleum block on a newspaper. Roll ink onto linoleum printing block, working quickly to cover all areas. Lay the block on a sheet in the printing press and press. Take away the block and your print is ready.
To make a group work, all kids have to cut out their prints. Ask some students to make a collage of all autumn leaves.

Building sandwiches

Texture, balance and variety were elements students concentrated on as they created this collage of a big sandwich! You need:

1. half a piece of coloured card board A3 size
2. leftovers coloured paper
3. ribbed cardboard
4. noodles in different shapes
5. seeds or tealeaves
6. crepe paper
7. glue
8. scissors
9. yarn
10. pieces of cotton

Children create a table cloth from leftovers of cotton or paper. A plate has to be cut and glued on the table. The sandwich is made of ribbed cardboard. Now building can start!

Discuss with the kids what kind of food they like on their sandwich and how to represent this with the materials they have. Examples: yellow paper with holes in it will represent cheese; red yarn can be ketchup and am enrolled piece of pink cotton represents a slice of ham.

The artwork must partly be 3-D. Don't glue everything just flat, but try to work spatial and let things overlap. Make sure kids do this by showing three dimensional glueing before kids start working.

When there is enough food on the sandwich, it has to be closed with the top of a sandwich out of ribbed cardboard.

Picknick quilt

What kind of things do you think of when you hear the word summer? Which of those things are easy to be drawn? An ice cream will be easy to draw, but a drawn beach will be less clear as part of a quilt. Is it better to choose objects that belong to the beach such as shells or beach toys. Each group receives a large sheet of coloured paper and white squares of paper from 11 by 11 cm. We're drawing summerquilts together!

Discuss how you can get a group work: choosing matching colours or choosing the same subject.

You need:

1. pencils
2. sheets of paper from 10 by 10 cm
3. scissors and glue
4. big cardboard for background

Every member of the group makes some drawings for a summerquilt. Those little drawings have to be coloured with colour pencil. When all drawings are ready, they have to be glued on the coloured background. Possibly the edges of the large sheets can be decorated with sticky buttons or drawn patterns.

Picknickkleed, door Oscar, Ozan, Yorn, Fabian en Richard, groep 7

Waterlilies like Claude Monet

You need:

1. tissue paper in different colors
2. white drawing sheet (A4 size)
3. glue

Claude Monet was a French painter and founder of French impressionist painting. Impressionistic paintings are a kind of snapshots, giving a quick impression. Up close it will only show spots and streaks; at a distance you see that these spots together represent an image.

After viewing some waterlily paintings by Monet, children will make their own waterlilies using tissue paper. To get the spotty Monet effect, the tissue paper should be torn into pieces. For the background students tear pieces of blue and green tissuepaper and paste them on their sheet. 

The flowers are also made of torn pieces of tissue paper. It is important to work from big to small: first the background, then the pieces of the large flowers, and over them the heart of the flower. 

Just like James Rizzi

Houses in the style of James Rizzi, group work, grade 6

James Rizzi was born in 1950 in Brooklyn. He studied art in Florida (Gainesville), where he started experimenting with printing, painting and sculpting. Rizzi’s work often shows his birthplace New York. His paintings look sometimes childishly naive, with the bright colours and brilliant gaiety. In the art press Rizzi is often described as "Urban Primitive Artist '. Rizzi himself says he is influenced by Picasso, Klee and Dubuffet.

Show some paintings of Rizzi and discuss the characteristics:

• bright colours
• no gradations within colours
• evertything is outlined with a black marker
• houses have human faces/characteristics
• the artwork is full and busy
• background is full too

You need:

1. white drawing sheets A4 size cut lengthwise
2. markers
3. scissors and glue
4. blue cardboard A1 size for background

Students draw a house in Rizzi style, a house with human characteristics like cloths, limbs, eyes etc. It must be a house, that means students must not draw a square human being! This can be done by drawing basic elements of a house in any case, like windows, doors etc.
Colour the house with bright colour markers. Outline the details with black fine marker. Cut the house and outline it with a black marker. Draw things in the air: stars, a moon, globe, hot air balloon, ufo's etc. Look carefully at Rizzi's paintings to discover what he has made.
To make a group work, every student has to draw one house at least. Make a composition of all those houses and paste them on blue cardboard. Start pasting with the second row of houses, so the first row can be pasted overlapping the second one. Be sure you don't paste two houses with the same colours next to eachother.
Paste the stars and ufo's on the background.     

Rizzi houses group work, grade 5