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Hampshire Woodland week
During Hampshire's woodland week
Pennington Junior school had two visiting artists, this worked wonderfully
with our Heritage project.
Graham Olive came into yr5 to show them how to work with chalk pastels.
First Graham explained how the pastels were made with chalk and pigment
(colour) and how the paper they were using had special "teeth"
on it to grip the pastels. Graham then took them through the picture
step by step.
After showing the children how tohold the chalk with three fingers rather
than in a pencil like grip, the "painting" (Graham calls himself
a painter as paints and pastels both contain pigment) began by putting
in 1 large tree just off centre, so that there would not be the same
space left on either side of the picture. The background of the picture
was then filled in with blue, with white added to it at the bottom.
The foreground was painted in a warm green, as warm colours lift them
selves off the page (Graham explained that warm colours are reds, oranges
and yellows) and the mid ground was filled with a cool green (cool colours
are black, grey and blue.) The next stage was to shake any excess dust
onto a piece of paper on the floor rather than blow it, as the chalk
could get in peoples eyes or be inhaled. Graham then explained how to
smudge in the pastels using the palm of their hands, saving fingers
for smaller bits like tree branches. They then put in fence posts and
went over any tree outline that had been smudged. For the finishing
touches they added green to the tree for leaves and yellow to the foot
of the tree for large grasses.
Olivia came in to talk to year
4 about weaving withies. First she showed the children a number of slides
about how withies are grown and cut and the variety of different colours
that they come in and the work she had done with other children .She
also showed the children a range of things that she had made from withies,
such as a basket, a mask and a lobster pot. Some of the children then
stayed with Olivia to practice their withy weaving skills, whilst others
went with Miss Jones to use a variety of materials to weave small baskets.
Along with the visiting artists
we also had a wonderful story teller Graham Rogers, who told the story
'The Green Knight'. The children listened to his inspiring tell.