Visual Arts Unit Overview– Year One
Elements of Art: Colour
Primary Colours
Recognise red, yellow and blue as primary colours. Explore mixing primary colours to
make secondary colours.
Warm and Cool Colours
Observe how colours can create different feelings and how certain colours can seem ‘warm’ (red,orange, yellow) or ‘cool’ (blue,
green, grey)
Using Warm and Cool Colours
Explore how artists use warm and cool colours to create feeling.
Learn colour names including light and dark
Experiment with colour mixing Adding white to a colour Adding black to a colour Create a colour wheel
Online activity from the Welsh National Grid for Learning: Colour Mixing
Pieter Bruegel, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967
(Tate Modern, London)
Create a painting or collage of a park or city scene in winter.
Create a display of cool colours perhaps as raindrops falling from the sky.
Henri Rousseau, Surprised! A Tiger in a Tropical Storm,1891 (National Gallery, London)
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers,1888 (National Gallery, London)
Create a contrasting painting or collage of a park or city scene in summer. Carefully select the warm colours to use.
Create a contrasting display with warm colours.
Core Knowledge
Creative application of knowledge
Visual Arts Unit Overview– Year One
Elements of Art: Line
Exploring Lines
Identify and use different lines:
straight, zigzag, curved, wavy, thick,
thin.
How do artists use lines?
Lines can be used in lots of different
ways.
Experimenting with lines
Lines can be used to represent lots of
different things.
Teach the names of different lines Explore thick and thin lines
Play with creating different pictures using lines
This programme from the BBC teaches children about different lines and how to use them to draw characters: Get Squiggling
Rembrandt van Rijn, Saskia in a Straw Hat, 1633 (Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin)
Pierre Bonnard, The Breakfast (Le Dé-jeuner), 1923 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin)
Explore the pieces of art referring to lines.
Joan Miró, Painting (Peinture), 1925 (National Galleries of Scotland, Edin-burgh)
Create own interpretations of Miró’s painting using lines and shapes
Look at other examples of Miró’s work Create a string drawing with a piece or several pieces of string on black card. Core Knowledge
Creative application of knowledge
Visual Arts Unit Overview– Year One
Types of Art: Architecture and Sculpture
Famous Buildings
Buildings are designed by architects
who design their buildings on paper
first using line drawings.
What is sculpture?
Sculpture is not flat like a painting but
has ‘three dimensions’ or is 3d.
Exploring sculpture
Sculptures can come in many different
shapes and sizes and can be made
us-ing many different materials.
The Palace of Westminster, focus on the parts by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin, constructed 1840-1870 (Westminster, London)
Westminster Abbey, present building begun un-der King Henry III in 1245 (Westminster, London) The Banqueting House (part of the former
White-hall Palace), by Inigo Jones, 1622, with ceiling paintings by Rubens added in 1636 (Whitehall, London)
Explore lines and shapes in pictures of buildings and visit a local building that shows interesting design.
Hubert Le Sueur, King Charles the First, 1633 (Trafalgar Square, London)
Hamo Thornycroft, Oliver Cromwell, 1899 (Palace of Westminster, London)
E. H. Baily, Lord Horatio Nelson, 1840-43 (Trafalgar Square, London)
Visit a local sculpture
Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Four-teen, 1880-81 (Tate, Liverpool)
Barbara Hepworth, Infant, 1929 (Tate, St Ives)
Antony Gormley, Angel of the North, 1998 (Gateshead)
Create a clay sculpture of a hedgehog using cocktail sticks, cloves for eyes and string for whiskers.
Core Knowledge
Creative application of knowledge
Visual Arts Unit Overview– Year One
Language of Art
Style
Style: the way a work of art looks (in
literature, the way something has
been written or sounds)
Narrative
Narrative: the word we use for a story
in a work of art
Character
Character: a word to refer to the main
or important figures in a work of art or
literature; but also a term to describe
a type of figure or person, such as
‘hero’
Contrast several pieces of art with very differ-ent styles. For example:
Pointillism (dots)
Impressionism (bright colours, soft lines) Surrealism (e.g Dali’s clocks– dream like) Children can just be shown lots of different art and can learn that ‘style’ means how some-thing looks. They could use programs such as
2paint a picture to create pieces in the style of one of the above.
Talk about and write stories for pieces of art such as:
Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the Dragon, 1470 (National Gallery, London)
Jacopo Tintoretto, Saint George and the Drag-on, 1555 (National Gallery, London)
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg can be used to create exciting narra-tives from single pictures.
Look at characters in a range of paintings and discuss who they might be, how we know that and what else we can find out about them from the painting.
St George (paintings mentioned previ-ously)
Paint a character from a favourite story in a scene from the story.
Discuss how we can show a character is brave, scared, sad etc. by painting things in the scene to give a clue. Core Knowledge
Creative application of knowledge
Visual Arts Unit Overview– Year One
Paintings of Children
Children in Art
To observe children depicted in art and
be able to explain what is shown, who
the children might be, what they are
doing, how they might be feeling etc.
Children Playing in Art
Understand that we can learn about
how children used to play by looking
at art.
Painting our friends
To be able to create a piece of art
showing how we play with our friends.
Look at a range of pieces of art depicting children.
Discuss how what we see can give us clues about the children.
William Hogarth, The Graham Children, 1742 (National Gallery, London)
Draw or paint some children in a scene, per-haps from a photograph of the class or a photograph of siblings.
Pieter Bruegel, Children’s Games, 1560 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) John Singer Sargent, Carnation, Lily, Lily,
Rose, 1885-6 (Tate Britain, London)
Take some photos of the class partici-pating in various play activities. Enlarge the photo on a colour
photo-copier if possible.
Ask children to choose a photo and use it to help them create a painting or drawing of play.
Discuss what name or title could be given to the art the children produce. Core Knowledge
Creative application of knowledge
Visual Arts Unit Overview– Year One
Paintings that tell stories
Art that tells a story
Artists can tell a story, or a part of a
story through art.
Heroes in Art
We can learn about characters by
look-ing at paintlook-ings of them.
George and the Dragon
George and the Dragon is one famous
story that artists have painted.
Children can explore different paintings and find out which story it is telling. They can look at elements such as where
is the story happening, what time of day is it, is it an exciting thing or a sad thing that is happening?
What happened before the picture? What happened afterwards?
What might the characters be saying?
Discuss what ‘hero’ means and how we might tell a character is a hero.
Create a drawing or painting of a hero from a favourite story.
Look for clues about the character– how do we know he is a hero?
Paolo Uccello, Saint George and the Dragon, 1470 (National Gallery, Lon-don)
Jacopo Tintoretto, Saint George and the Dragon, 1555 (National Gallery, London)
Jacobus de Voragine in ‘The Golden Legend’ showing George battling the Dragon
Children could paint their own versions of George and the Dragon.
Core Knowledge
Creative application of knowledge