Day Four - Painting possibilities

We did this over two days, last Friday and today, but they tie together well so could be done in one session.

We are learning to:
• see how different artists respond to colour and their environment in different ways
• identify warm, cool, complimentary and harmonious colours
• come up with some reasons for painting abstractly
• think about using shape, line, tone and texture in painting

The first part  forms a bridge between realist and abstract painting, using the work of local painters (Co. Longford) to connect life with art and expands into a discussion of abstract artists: Kandinsky, Klee, Riley, Miro, Malevich etc. and the reasons for painting abstractly. Have a look at these video clips:

The second part is a practical application of this, looking closely at your surroundings and responding through paint and colour, while experimenting with a range of paints. Here we are learning to:
• record colours from our environment
• think about how your environment shapes who you are
• think about how colours react to each other

Along with all this you can introduce the basics of the colour wheel, point out the relationship between colour and place, explore warm and cool colours, complementary and harmonious colours, tone and texture and challenge notions of what a painting is. The journal can then be used to observe and record colour in your personal spaces and environments later.

We had great fun creating our own abstract paintings and experimenting with watercolour and acrylic and comparing the different techniques and results.We didn't really stick to the idea of observing colours around us although we did a lot of talking about the colours in the abstract paintings, where they remind us of and how they make us feel. Here's some of our paintings from today:

Day Three - Drawing possibilities

Day Three is a practical art task - experiment with different drawing media on a range of different surfaces from printing paper to tinfoil.

What we are learning today:
* Use a journal to keep track of your ideas and learning
* Try lots of possibilities with different drawing media
* Record what works and what doesn't
* Think about how these experiments can be used in later drawings

We started with a recap on what we did on the first two days, to make connections between art and writing and the end goal of making a self-portrait book. The emphasis is on the mark-making possibilities of each media. While the goal is to explore the uses of drawing media and papers, remember to see it as part of the whole project, thinking about the posiible ways of using your experiments later.

As usual none of the tasks are compulsary, feel free to adapt or leave out parts, but do try to experiment with new ways of working. In the pilot project everyone used their journals to record what worked together and what didn't:

Today we took different approaches. Maria made a rainbow with different media and I made a collage roughly based on my self-portrait drawing from day one with different papers before drawing over.

We used pencil, pen, oil and chalk pastel, charcoal, marker and crayon, tinfoil, tissue paper, scraps of old photos, wallpaper, sandpaper, newspaper, bubble wrap and shopping bags, but anything that's handy will do. Have fun and remember you can use the journal to draw aspects of the world around you, keep track of important events, emotions and feelings and planning for the finished book. I used mine today to write down all the sounds I could hear around me outside, there's no rules!

Day Two - What is a book?

We've just finished Day Two here. Yesterday was about looking at self-portraits and drawing yourself. Today is about books and writing about yourselves. Here's what we are learning today:
* Think about what makes a book
* Think about how form (how the book is put together) and content (what the book is about) work together
* Compare different types of writing: fiction, poetry, letter, newspaper, magazine, factual, blog etc.
* Think about differences in style, tone and audience when planning your own writing

We started by listing all the different types of writing that we could think of from fact to fiction and decided that the important thing when planning to write is to know who you are writing for. We also talked about how a letter to a business person would be different to writing to a friend; how a newspaper article is to give facts quickly and might be thrown away afterwards but a magazine might be more image based and be kept longer. Poems usually rhyme and have shorter lines than prose, and the form (layout on page) might be important. Books for toddlers, Maria pointed out, would need to have short sentences and lots of pictures, while teenagers would prefer novels with lots of text.

After this we looked a lots of different books around the house to see how they are put together. We talked about how all dictionaries are structured in the same way, and imagined what would happen if they were just written as words came to mind! We examined a book about an Egyptian Mummy which has a plastic mummy case in the middle which shows you more with each page turn and we looked at the Life on a Famine Ship pop-up book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and a few others before watching this video clip that I made for the pilot project:

An important part of the pilot project in the classroom was the journal, which were used to explore techniques, draw, paint, sketch, write notes, develop ideas, collect interesting images, photos, textures, materials, fabric scraps and methods of working over the course of the project. They're meant to be a safe place to record mistakes as well as successes and jot down ideas that come to you in the middle of the night. We got ours today, we are using A5 sketchpads, but anything that can be used to keep thoughts and ideas together would work, from an old shoebox to a portfolio case, or laptop. Again as the project is more about the process than the content they don't need to be neat and tidy, use whatever methods of recording you prefer, visual, written or audio.

The prompts I had for writing about yourself today were a letter to your past or future self, a newspaper report on some event in your life or a poem about an aspect of yourself. Feel free to do as many or as few as you like. Maria decided to do a fact file on herself and our cats instead and I've still to do mine.

Day One - Looking at Self-portraits

One of the great things about home-education in the absence of time restrictions. In the pilot classroom this activity was squashed into about 40 minutes before break, at home we got to spend about two hours until interest waned. Spend as little or as long as you like at this, it's really an introduction to the whole idea of self-portraits, but can grow to include more about the artists lives, what was going on in the world and in our case how many different hats has Rembrandt got? We also had lots of fun with www.picassohead.com
I asked Maria if she would like to give her opinion on day one, but all she will say is that she liked it all.

The original scheme had Assessment for Learning (AfL) techniques built in which is about sharing the learning goals with children and giving them an active role in assessing their own work, which is shown to increase creativity as it eliminates the social comparisons which often go along with assessment in the classroom. Obviously there is no need to keep records of assessment as you work through the project at home, but I'll share some of what we are learning anyway for anyone who wants to keep track:
* Identify a self-portrait
* See how they sometimes change their ideas about themselves over time
* Come up with some reasons for this
* Choose a drawing media to draw yourself

The first self-portraits we looked at were two by Rembrandt dated 1630 and 1660:

We talked about these questions:
Rembrandt made over 90 self-portraits during his life. Why do you think he did this?
Rembrandt's self-image changed very little in 30 years, why do you think this is?
What differences can you notice?
What do you think of the colours he used?

Then we looked at this website: www.rembrandtpainting.net and clicked on the link about self-portraits found out a bit more about why he painted so many and then looked at a few more like self-portrait with tossed hair or brimmed hat etc.

Next we looked at lots of Van Gogh self-portraits and found out that most of his were painted over the space of three years. www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/selfportrait.html has lots of info on why this is including quotes from some of his letters and a cool YouTube video clip that shows lots of them morphing into each other. We also looked at some more Van Gogh paintings on Google Art Project, which lets you take a virtual tour of art museums and zoom right in on the details of the paintings. Have a look at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam here: www.googleartproject.com/collection/van-gogh-museum/museumview/

Questions we discussed about Van Gogh:
Van Gogh also painted many self-portraits. Why do you think he did this?
What differences can you notice?
What do you think of the colours he used?
Can you notice the texture created by his brush strokes?

We looked at four very different Dali self-portraits from 1919, 1923, 1941 and 1972.

Dali's self-image and style changed a lot overtime. Why do you think this is?
Look at the dates and think about what else was going on in the world at the time, do you think this is connected to it?
Which one do you like best/least? Why?
More Dali paintings on www.virtualdali.com

The last two self-portraits we looked at were by Leonardo daVinci and Picasso:

We compared the styles, colours, lines used etc. and noted the differences then asked
Do you think Leonardo actually looked like that? What about Picasso?
Why do you think Picasso chose this style?

Finally draw your own self portrait in your favourite media (pencil, pen, paint, collage, pastel, crayon etc.)

Some general questions to ask after this:

What have you learnt about why artists create self-portraits?
Have you new ideas for how to create yours?
What connections can you make with your own work?
Here are some websites we didn't get time to look at today, but plan to later:
www.mos.org/leonardo/
www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/studio
www.picasso.com

Here's a link to one of Maria's self-portraits: http://www.picassohead.com/?id=29b5e53

A short introduction

Hi everyone,
I just want to give a short introduction to this project before I start it properly. As part of my Masters thesis I researched ways to promote creativity in the classroom and by the end of it we had become a home-ed family. Those two things weren't necessarily connected, but a lot of what I was reading about methods of promoting creativity in schools fits in with what I have since read about educating at home.

We were thinking today about a project to start and decided to take my teacher pack as the starting point. Maria is delighted that I finally handed in my thesis and have more time to spend with her, but also interested in what I was spending all the time at. I thought it would be nice to share this with others and hopefully get some of you involved in creating your own too.

At the moment the plan is that I will put up ideas for activities here and share what we do with them. Anyone else who would like to share what they do can let me know through the comments below. The theme of the project is Identity and it was designed to be as flexible as possible so that it can be adapted for any age-group from toddler to adult. It's all about experimenting, having fun and exploring the things important to you in whatever way you feel most comfortable.

The emphasis in the original project was on the process of discovery rather than the product, so there are no step-by-step instructions, and no fixed outcomes. At the end of it you produce what can be loosely called a self-portrait book, the design and format is up to you. Part of the process is challenging pre-conceptions of what makes a book, a painting etc. while exploring the world around you and your place in it.


It was designed to make connections and blur distinctions between different subject areas, encourage experimentation and risk-taking, promote active rather than passive learning and boost intrinsic motivation and creativity. There's more detail on my thesis project at boostingcreativity.blogspot.com if anyone is interested or feel free to ask any questions you may have. Most of all I hope if you take part that you have fun and enjoy the process.

The next post will give details about how to begin, by looking at some famous self-portraits.