Adventures In Art: July 2020

Welcome to the penultimate MG Art Club challenge - To Infinity And Beyond!
But before we leave Earth, please click here to check out last week's Globetrotting Exhibition if you haven't already:

https://artatmg.blogspot.com/2020/07/globetrotting-exhibition.html

Right, now we're ready for lift off, it's time to get out of this world and into Infinity And Beyond! Yes, this week's art challenge is all about SPACE ART!

This week's focus artist is Peter Thorpe.

Peter Thorpe is a life long space fan, who started painting rockets and outer space as a way of finishing off tins of paint.

He uses leftover paint to create an abstract (made up, not real) background on a board or canvas. At first he wasn't sure what to do with these backgrounds, but then he started to paint planets and rockets on top and they really 'took off'!!

Here are some more examples of Peter Thorpe inspired art by children of different ages.

Like Peter Thorpe, they've all got quite abstract backgrounds with planets and rockets placed on top.

If you aren't so interested in how to get to space, but just want to be surrounded by it, there are lots of different ways you could capture it.

Rose created her planet art by splattering a black piece of paper with white paint. She then used the shaving foam marbling technique to create her planets, which she cut out and stuck onto her background.

Here's a good introductory video to the shaving foam marbling technique - you could adapt to get the colours and effects of the planets you want to do:

Watercolours work well along with felt pens that you then brush over with a little water.

Oil pastels or wax crayons are good for colouring your planets and stars, before going over your picture with a dark paint wash. The wax crayons and oil pastels will 'resist' the paint and won't let it soak in like it will do on the rest of the paper.

If you have some black paper/card just splattering it with white paint immediately gives you a perfect space background, before working on your planets. If you are very careful you can draw and colour your planets first before splattering. The picture below was done in colouring pencil, with added details, and some outlining with a fine black pen.

These planets were created using a mix of paint and oil pastels - again a black background really make things stand out.

Right in the middle you may choose to do an astronaut....maybe even yourself in space!

A few years ago Year 4 at MG were doing a topic on space, where we looked at the artist Peter Thorpe as well as creating our own alien space monsters. We used soft pastels for our rocket pictures and oil pastels for our monsters so we could see the different effects you could get from both.

Click here to find some more examples of what we got up to:

https://artatmg.blogspot.com/2016/11/past-adventures-6.html

Before we started to think about and create our space monsters, we played this roll and draw game to get us warmed up.

Then we set about creating our own monsters, often incorporating some ideas from the game above, along with other examples that we saw as well as using our imagination.

Above are just some ideas without a background, but don't forget to do a background for yours like these below:

A whole group of space monsters, some behind others!

Finally to get you in the space mood, here are two classic extracts from Wallace & Gromit's Grand Day Out - enjoy!

Good Luck!

We are really looking forward to seeing your out of this world artistic space adventures.

Please send a photo of your finished artwork by Friday 31st July to MGartclub@missiongrove.org.uk

Hello and welcome to this week's MG Art Club's GLOBETROTTING Virtual Exhibition.

Thank you to all of you who dusted off your Art Passports to transport us all over the world with your creativity. This week we've had volcanoes, mountains, coastlines and plenty more. A few of you were inspired by the Aboriginal dot painting technique too.

As ever you've used a wide range of materials: soft pastels, felt pens, colouring pencils, paint, watercolours and mixed media.

Hope you've all got your boarding passes, if so just click here to be flown all over a world that is bursting with colour, accompanied by Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version of 'What A Wonderful World'.

Now please scroll down to read about our artists and where they got their Globetrotting inspiration from.

Jhael - Kittiwake

Jhael starts our exhibition with an amazing landscape painting of Cotopaxi, an active volcano in her home country - Ecuador. She has used bright, bold colours in the foreground leading up to the focal point of her painting - the brilliant blue volcano that really stands out against the muted, gentle blues of the sky.

RuiBo - Magpie

This week RuiBo has been exploring geometric, Cubist style art - very much in the style of the great Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. He has made fantasic use of blending his colours inside his shapes to create this impressibve abstract effect.

Klaudia - Kittiwake

Even though Klaudia is on holiday in Poland (see photograph above), she still found time to research and try out the Aboriginal dot technique in her 'purr-fect' art work this week. She has given her cat real personality - just look at how its front paw is curling round. It really is the cat's whiskers!

RuiXuan - Grouse

RuiXuan has created a fantastic mixed media picture this week incorporating a cartoonified paper sun with vibrant colourful strips of paper radiating from it. It is shining down on his multicoloured city. It is such a happy picture.

Senna - Magpie

Senna is in Tokyo, Japan at the moment and was lucky to attend a Sumo Wrestling match. Being the ardent, globetrotting artist that she is, she brought along her sketchbook to capture the event live. If you compare it to a photo of the scene, you can see that she has captured the whole event brilliantly from the Japanese flag to the roof above the arena and, of course, the sumo wrestlers and referee. It is a great skill to draw what you see.

Rayyan - Year 1

Rayyan has travelled from a volcanic island, to the sea and onto Australia in his artwork this week.
His island picture is full of movement from the volcano erupting to his brother jumping off the island from a palm tree. While all this is going on, his mum is on the lefthand side of the picture taking a photo of it all. He then painted a seascape using acrylic paint. The whole picture is bursting with colour and sea life. Finally his hand painting is a superb example of the type of earthy colours and dots used in Aboriginal art.

Yaseen - Year 1

Yaseen's favourite place in the world is an aquarium so his first picture combines the idea of an aquarium and a shop. Even though he has only just finished Year 1, he is beginning to capture a 3D effect in his drawing. He then used acrylic paint to create an amazing rainbow mountain landscape. In his last 3 pictures he experimented with the Aboriginal dot painting effect combined with pointillism.

Ms Zahir

Rayyan and Yaseen's mum also got busy with the acrylic paints, modelling how to use them to the boys. She created this fabulous mountain scene with a reflection in a stream. She thinks it looks like a Scottish loch... and we agree.

Max - Waxwing

Like the true Art Clubber he is, Max has taken his sketch book and pencils on holiday to Greece with him. He has drawn what he can see from his room - a real skill. He has really captured the cragginess of the rock, giving it a sense of perspective in the sea by his use of an horizon line. We love that he included all the clothes drying on the balcony in the foreground. Great sketching.

Ayla - Buzzard

Ayla, our youngest Art Clubber this week, took her inspiration from a trip to Pakistan last year where she saw the wonderful sunset in the photograph. First she did a sketch of the scene, then added some brilliant, bold colours in felt pen to achieve a fantastic finished result. After that she experimented with the Aboriginal dot painting technique, showing a lot of patience in completing her pattern and creating her snake.

Ms Harris

Ms Harris has spent quite a lot of time in India. One her favourite places is Kovalam beach in Kerala. In her watercolour picture, she has captured one of the many sunsets she saw there with a silhouette of some palm trees in the foreground.

Rose

Rose has visited two very different places in her art this week. To reflect this, she has used bold bright warm colours for her first picture and softer cooler colours for her second picture. She has also chosen to use completed different materials - felt pens, then soft pastels to achieve the differing effects she wanted.

Ms Harding

Ms Harding's first picture is of a souk in Tunisia and is based on a poster she used to have by the artist August Macke. Like him, she used watercolours and earthy tones for her picture. Her second picture is more abstract and depicts where her mother grew up in a little white washed cottage at the foot of the purple mountains in Ireland.

Meanwhile in school...

Miss Beath's Year 5 Group:
The children in Miss Beath's group had a lot of fun using watercolours, chalk pastels and fine liners as they travelled the world from the Amazon Rainforest to tropical coasts, mountain ranges, Stonehenge and the countryside to produce this fantastic array of globetrotting art.

Miss Beath