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During the course of the day I met the entire school population of Wigginton School who were having an Arts Week and wished to see a 'live' artist.
I showed three of my paintings, and talked about what I do and what I might carry in my large handbag as an artist. One of the pupils explained to her friend why I would not be having paint, water and brushes in my bag. We used some Impressionist paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Claude Monet as our inspiration.
We talked about mark making and how charcoal might be used in different ways by smudging, dotting, drawing lines and using the charcoal on its side or on its end. We looked at paintings by Van Gogh to see how he had made marks to create movement. Then we looked at the painting Starry Night.
Harry from Class 3 explained, "In real life you cannot see the wind, but in some of Van Gogh's drawings and paintings you can. I was thinking that in some pictures he shows the wind by the mark effects. He makes the leaves on the trees sway. Sometimes if you make the marks soft and smudge it makes a softer better effect. I see it is a big bushy tree surrounded by loads of big swirly wind. I think that he has done it because he wants people to know that it is really windy. The lines at the bottom of the picture look slow and gentle and the top lines look storm. Here he has pushed the charcoal hard and has used it in a different way, and has scraped it hard to create a different effect. It is effective because the wind is going faster than in his painting Wheatfield with Cypresses."
Harry had more to say about the painting Wheatfield with Cypresses: “It looks similar to Starry Night but Van Gogh has not put so much effort into it. The clouds look as if they are moving and in the Cypress trees he creates the same windy effect. He pushes the grass in the same way. Usually when you look at a field the grass moves in different directions.” I asked Harry whether he thought Van Gogh had been successful in creating movement. Harry replied, “I think so, but it depends on what he is trying to achieve. His trees look like buildings.”
The day finished with revolving groups of children from the top two classes going out into the school garden and sketching using a viewfinder to compose their pictures.
© Sally Bassett 2005–2007 <sally@sallybassett.co.uk> Telephone 01442 851353