My Year 3 class were inspired by the colourful work of the artist Ken Done to create some fabulous artworks of a coral reef. These do take a while to complete so I would suggest using paper no larger than A3!
We worked in oil pastel, and started off by drawing some very simple fish shapes and began to fill them in with multiple coloured short strokes rather than block colour to imitate the style of the artist.
Then we started to add coral at the base of the artwork, again using multiple colours and working in short strokes.
The students keep on adding more layers of coral and more fish (or other ocean creatures!) until they are happy with their picture.
To complete it, they work in multiple shades of blue to fill in the entire backgound, leaving as little white as possible.
Displayed en masse they look so fabulous (despite my terrible photography!).
I’d love to do this on a large canvas as a whole class project…
Happy Mess Making!
H
These look fantastic! I know it’s a while ago now, but did you use any particular works as stimulus or just the work of Done in general?
We used ‘Aquarium’, ‘Azure Reef’ and ‘December Reef’ as stimulus, but if you just search Ken Done reef images there are so many stunning work to choose from. We also looked at photographs of the Great Barrier Reef. Hope that helps! H