Everything starts with a dot - Art Week 

The dot

The Dot is a story about a girl named Vashti who is encouraged by her teacher to take a risk.  Vashti does not believe she can draw.  She is filled with self-doubt until her teacher gently persuades her to, “just make a mark and see where it takes you.” This inspirational story shows how one reluctant learner gains self-esteem with just one dot.  Once Vashti sees her artwork signed and framed, she is inspired to experiment more with dots. 

Foundation

In Foundation, the children thought about what makes a ‘piece of art’. They learnt about how to hold a tool correctly and how to make a darker/lighter mark. The children focused on sorting, ordering and creating colour.

Foundation’s artist in focus was Megan Coyle - an artist and illustrator who resides in New York City. She takes common, everyday magazines and turns them into works of art.

 

Year 1

In year 1, the children experimented with different mediums. The children used a range of tools to pracise making different marks and lines. They evaluated the benefits of using each tool which helped them to inform their final piece. They used this new knowledge to create a layered dot with different mediums.

Year 1’s artist in focus was Ilya Bolotowsky – abstract artist who explored geometric art. The children used a combination of shape and line to create a dot inspired by Bolowsky.

 

Year 2

In year 2, children have explored Pointillism in the style of Georges Seurat. They took inspiration from ‘The Dot’ and made their own sequel, “everything starts with a line”. The children experimented with texture by adding flour to their paint and explored the effect this had.

The children incorporated pointillism into their topic learning and created artwork based on the Great Fire of London. Following this,

the children used pointillism to create their final dot.

 

Year 3- Renata Bernal, Geometric art

In year 3, the children focused on geometric art (shape and lines). They used the work of Renata Bernal as inspiration to design their dots.

The children experimented with primary colours to make secondary colours. Then the children explored using black and white paint to create tints and shades.

Year 4

In year 4, the children were inspired by the work of El Anatsui – a sculpture from Ghana. He transformed simple everyday materials into striking large scale installations.

Year 4 learn how to weave, collage, and print with recycled materials. After this exploration stage, the children decided upon the art form they wanted to use to compose their dot.

Year 5

In year 5, the children looked at the artwork of Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. As an architect and environment activist he was inspired by the environment and created masterpieces of unruly shapes and vibrant colours.

Year 5, explored primary colours to create secondary colours and then moved onto experimenting with line width and filling a space with different types of line (distance between their lines, width and style).

The children use pictures of landscapes #to inspire their final dot.

Year 6- Dan Fenelon, Drawings inside of drawings

In year 6, we studied the artist, Dan Fenelon. Year 6 were inspired by his use of art which blends an infusion of pop, cartooning, modernism, and tribalism.

From this, we learnt how Zentangles can help created repeated patterns and created images based on animals trying to recreate the mosaic-like backgrounds and ancient symbols.

During the week we have: explored ‘The Dot’ (PSHE), carried out a skills focus art lesson, studied an artist (as a year group), published a dot in the style of the artist and taken part in a whole school art exhibition. Can you spot the year groups/artist styles in our finished pieces below?