Trees, dots and colour blending :TR Mack style Yr 5 Primary art

My year 5 boys have just completed a painting unit based, 

inspired by the work of TR Mack.

There are a number of art education ideas

 floating around the internet,

 regarding this artist.

 One I particularly admire 

is by One Crayola Short,

 so check it out too.

I have taken a slightly different approach with my Yr 5 boys.

We began with some colour wheel theory and vocabulary (building the foundations).

Eventually we turned our focus
 to monochromatic colour schemes.

The boys were set the task
 of painting a monochromatic background.

We discussed choices they could make such as blending,

or using a more textured cross hatching approach.

Monochromatic Background using a textured approach

The next step was to look at the work of TR Mack
 and deconstruct his approach to tree scapes.

The boys practiced drawing trees...
 splitting branches again and again.
We discussed styles; swirly, angular, sparse, spooky etc.

(incidentally there are real science and Maths links

 possible here, as my husband pointed out).

Fill in the trees in a solid colour such as black or navy

Before the boys were ready to draw
 up their tree(s) on their background,

we recapped some compositional concepts
 that we had covered in a previous unit.

Points such as:

•  avoid placement in the centre,
•  anchoring the image by connecting to the edges,
• variety of size if there is more than one tree etc. 

Add a ground if you wish

Finally, we printed dots,
 and dots on dots,
 and dots on dots on dots. 

We used old corks, cotton buds,

 industrial offcuts, anything circular will do. 

Testing colours and objects for printing.

Spacing is important here,

and we discussed clusters,

 regular spacing, irregular spacing

 and the pros and cons of all possibilities.

These examples are only a handful of the class,

as they were all successful.

I love how each tree has its own story.