Patterns In Nature

During Black History Month, Year 3 also looked at Patterns In Nature and how these are reflected in some African fabrics.

In our sketchbooks we first experimented with drawing the 5 patterns in nature: spiral, meander, packing, branching and explosion.

We recognised these in patterns in the natural world making sure we used our new vocabulary to describe them.

We used these patterns to create our own 'quick pic':

Having looked at some African fabrics, we thought about how we could  turn these patterns into simple motifs, using different colour combinations: primary, secondary, warm, cool, complementary and analogous.

After some experimentation in our sketchbooks, we drew our own chalk grids, with a different motif in each panel (also in chalk). We used different combinations of oil pastels to colour in each panel, then covered our sheet of paper with ink. It soaked into the chalk but the oily pastels resisted it. We tried to get the effect of some African fabrics, such as the Adire Cloth, where a wax resist technique is used.

Swan class displayed their 'cloths' in the corridor on South Site, to show other children what different colour combinations look like.