Cups of Creativity
This week in The Art Room, our theme was inspired by International Museums Day, which will be celebrated across the world on Saturday 16 May. We began our sessions by chatting with the children about what museums are and how the objects they care for can help tell stories about the past, different cultures, and how the world works. But our focus for the afternoon was the Art Museum – an exciting place filled with imagination and creativity– and the many different Movements or art styles that can be discovered under one roof!
Museums are big places often housing hundreds of exhibits at any one time. To help their visitors explore the artworks on display more easily, the children discovered how art museums and galleries might organise their collections into different groups – similar to how libraries sort their books into different sections. Together, we looked at examples of portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and history paintings, learning how each type of artwork tells a different kind of story through its subject matter. Next, our young artists were introduced to the idea of artistic ‘movements’ – teams or groups of artists who shared similar styles, ideas, or ways of making art at different times in history.
To better illustrate the defining characteristics of various art styles and demonstrate how artists can see and represent the world in many different ways, we asked the children to become artists from four different art movements by creating four separate artworks of the same everyday object — a simple white mug. Quite a feat in one afternoon!
First, we explored Realism by carefully observing and drawing the mug as accurately as possible with pencil. The children did a great job thinking about scale and adding texture and depth with shading to give a true representation. Next, we experimented with Pointillism, building images from tiny dots of colour and testing the technique of optical blending where the juxtaposition of primary colours causes a visual mixing of colour on the paper: yellow dots + blue dots = green patches of colour. In their Pop Art versions, the children used bold, block colours, repeated patterns and snappy slogans inspired by the movement’s use of comic book imagery, popular culture and advertising. Finally, everyone stretched their imaginations with Surrealism, transforming the mug into unexpected and dreamlike creations. We were treated to amusing mug faces, sailing-cup vessels, giant dog baths and flying ‘Wicked’-themed crockery!
Everyone had great fun discovering how changing style, colour, and ideas can completely transform the same object into something new and exciting. We were so impressed with how enthusiastically the children explored each art style thinking both creatively and as mini art historians in representing the defining qualities of each different movement. Mounted and displayed on coloured backdrops, the finished collections became instant masterpieces!
