Autumn Agamograph
It feels quite autumnal outside The Art Room at the moment as the leaves on the trees start to turn and the glorious palette of red, orange, yellow and brown announces a change of season. This week, in addition to painting the beautiful shapes and colours that we can see in the natural world around us, we explored how to capture the dynamic change and movement of autumn on a flat piece of paper by creating super fun agamograph artworks that, like magic, change depending on how you look at them!
An agamograph is a type of art called Kinetic art and is named after the artist, Yaacov Agam, who loved making art that moved or changed. When you view an agamograph you can see two different pictures in one artwork, with each separate image appearing and coming into focus depending on whether you view it from the left or the right.
There were a lot of stages in this week’s activity and we were super impressed with how carefully the children followed the demonstrations in each afterschool session to create two watercolour paintings at the same time, switching back and forth to allow their brushstrokes on each sheet to dry. We talked about how, by using simple shapes and bold colours, we could give an impression of autumn and create the atmosphere of a landscape scene, without needing lots of detail, and practiced using different watercolour brushes to produce different effects: a larger round brush to sweep colour loosely and quickly over a hillside and a smaller liner brush to make thinner, more delicate marks.
Our youngest artists will complete their agamographs next week by carefully cutting their tree-filled paintings – one full of leafy colour, the other with branches shed bare – into strips and gluing them in an alternate pattern on a larger sheet of paper before folding, concertina-like, into its final form. We’re sure, like our older artists, they will do a great job of assembling the many different sections, displaying determination and individual flair in representing the burst of colours we see at the beginning of autumn and the leaf drop that occurs near the end. Well done everyone, what a great achievement and we hope you enjoy sharing your magical artworks at home!
