santam

I found this project in a very good book for art teachers, Santam’s creative arts teaching manual for the intermediate phase. The learner’s responded well to it and what they produced really impressed me!

The project began by me giving each learner a piece of paper and an oval object to trace from. They had to first trace and then cut out an oval shape from this paper. They were shown some of the techniques that can be used when drawing a face and the proportions of the face were discussed before each learner was given a mirror and asked to draw their face!

Once the drawing was done the learners were given premixed teddy dye and water so that they could paint the background of their portrait with a colour. Some learners also used kokis to colour in part of their portrait.

For the border they were given an A4 piece of black card as well as gold and silver gel pens. They were told that they had to include their name somewhere in the border as an element but must otherwise decorate the border.

I’ve put in slightly more pictures than I normally do because I was so happy with how they turned out!

The idea for this project came from the Santam’s creative arts teaching manual. A free book available to art teachers.

The grade 5s arrived in class to a barrage of questions about frogs. Who likes them? What do you know about them?! Tell your stories!!! This they did with great aplomb. Having some idea of what the next artwork would entail, The kids suspicions were confirmed when various pictures of frogs were handed out.

The learners began with a square piece of paper, cut to the width of an A4. A border had already been drawn onto this. Their first task was to draw one of the frogs in pencil in the center of the ruled square. The pictures of frogs that they received all had patterns and this was emphasized.

The next step was to trek out to the gardens and pilfer a bunch of interesting natural elements (sticks, leaves etc.). Heading back in they drew these behind the frog using black pen/ black koki.

Finally the kids could work on the border of their artwork. We first brainstormed a selection of words to do with frogs: So big, small, ugly, cute, poisonous, squishy, jumpy were some of the contrasting adjectives used. They cut these out of either black or colored paper and, along with decorative elements, used these to decorate the border.

This is a successful project and took the grade 5’s 2 weeks.