Life’s a picnic

With temperatures soaring this week, we kept things chilled in the Art Room by enjoying the simple things in life, creating art works inspired by picnic-themed still life activities.

An arrangement of all kinds of man-made or natural objects, still lifes are often brought together to celebrate material pleasures, like food and drink, whilst traditionally serving to symbolise the brevity of natural life. As the objects do not move, an artist can take their time, slow down and notice the details of the things before them, the perfect activity to develop sketching and recording skills.

So, with this in mind, all our artists got creative this week by thinking about the shapes, size and colours of the objects and picnic items carefully selected to inspire them.  In our preschool sessions, the children rustled up delicious looking plates of fruit by sponge-printing brightly coloured paint to depict mouthwatering slices of watermelon, juicy strawberries and plentiful bunches of grapes and cherries.

Using a similar printing method, our afterschool artists enjoyed designing their own vibrant, checked picnic rugs on which to display their picnic treats. With a bountiful hamper and spread of goodies laid out before them in the classroom, the children were encouraged to use their observation skills to carefully draw and set out their own picnic scene. We were treated to cupcakes, baguettes, strawberries and bottles of pop a-plenty! Although everyone was viewing the same still life arrangement, each finished artwork varied wonderfully to reveal the tastes and preferences of their individual artist and the imaginary settings in which their creative ‘al-fresco’ creations took shape.