Still Life Painting

Inspired by the book Handa's Surprise and artworks depicting fruit bowls by some famous artists, some of the children made their own attempts at still life drawings of a fruit bowl. They used oil pastels. We did not have all the same fruit in the basket as Handa, but we made sure there seven pieces.

I was really struck by the way this child overlaid the fruit he drew onto of each other. This is actually a very realistic representation of the perspective as he shows that he could only see parts of the fruit and some pieces were in front of other pieces.

This child drew their pieces of fruit overlapping the basket, which again was accurate to what she could see, as the pieces of fruit were slightly visible thorough the weaving.

Thanks to families who have responded to our call for flowers to be brought in. We used these as a stimulus for further exploration of still life, this time with water paint.

Henry asked "how do I paint leaves?" Mrs Vella modelled using a fine brush and making small thin lines. Teachers try to sit with children and paint alongside them to model the processes, encouraging children to make their own explorations and interpretations. They might say "I would do this... how would you do it?" Or "epidote you like to paint it a different way?" We want children to actually develop the skills and understandings that support their expression, but retain their own creativity and original expression. We avoid praising, but rather give feedback about the processes they've used. For example, "I noticed you used a thin brush to create thin lines here. I can see the purple paint overlapping the green paint. It looks kind of see-through."

The children practise washing the brush before changing colours whilst still exploring the nature of water paint to blend and remain transparent. They explored using paints coloured to look like the object they were depicting.

I always appreciate how differently children interpret what they see and make different explorations of the materials and the processes. Henry was excited to see how the paint dribbled and ran when the paper was held up. He also enjoyed exploring making droplets by flicking a heavily loaded paint brush.