TAKING SHELTER UNDERGROUND - WITH HENRY MOORE AS INSPIRATION

The pupils at Auchterhouse had been studying World War Two in class, so I showed them a short clip about some of the work of Henry Moore, when he was creating his drawings of people taking shelter in the Underground.  I also showed them some examples of his drawings, so they could see how sculptural Moore's drawings of people were and his use of a minimal palette.  The children were asked to think about FORM and we only introduced colour at the very end when we mounted some of their finished artworks onto red card, a striking and effective contrast with their black and white images.  

Henry Moore's Underground Shelter Drawings From World War 2

The children then experimented with charcoal on white paper and with white chalk on black sugar paper to create these atmospheric drawings.  

The sharp contrast in tones in the image above is very powerful.

The detail in the brick wall above is so effective.

This is a beautiful image and really gives the feeling of how crowded it was sleeping so close to so many people.  You also get the impression of how dark it must have been.

The drawing above is the early stages of this boy's final piece and could almost be one of Henry Moore's sculptures of a seated figure.

I love the detail of the blankets this person is wrapped up in.

FABULOUS FEATHERS!

The children were looking at LINE, SHAPE, TONE and PATTERN in these beautiful, observational drawings of feathers they created.  They really enjoyed using the 6B pencils to create some rich, velvety blacks in their drawings.  They drew feathers from a selection of hens, pigeon and pheasant and some lucky pupils were able to draw the Golden Eagle feather.

This boy from Abirlot looked really carefully at the different shapes and patterns in his pheasant feather above.

We talked about the different mathematical shapes we could identify in our feathers, before composing our drawings and were able to find triangles, semi-circles, trapeziums and parallelograms!    

Here is another lovely interpretation of the pheasant feather from a boy at Inverarity.

The work that has gone into the drawing above is tremendous, with all the individually overlapping feathers and the spectacular contrast between the light and dark tones.

OUR OWN LITTLE 'ODE TO AUTUMN'

'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,...' - with all the glorious, autumnal colours about, I couldn't resist bringing a little of the outdoors, indoors!  The children were able  to study the colours, lines and shapes very closely and worked really hard to try and create their own secondary colours, by blending the primary colours to achieve the colours you see in their lovely leaf drawings below.

There is such detail within each line in the drawing above and the artist was observing her chosen leaf so very carefully.  Beautiful patterns!  

The leaf above has such delicate colours.

I love the variety of greens in this leaf - so vibrant.