Year 2 - Art

Exploring the Artist

In Year 2, the children have learnt about the artist Alma Thomas. In their first lesson, they looked at some of Alma Thomas’ artwork, discussed their opinions and wrote about whether they liked or disliked the piece and why. The children then learnt about Alma Thomas and her life leading up to becoming an artist, they were amazed that she became an artist at the age of 68! The children enjoyed presenting their work in their own ways in their sketchbooks.

Alma Thomas’ technique

Year 2 learnt about the mosaic technique that Alma Thomas used to create her artwork. The children looked at her work more closely and discussed how she produced this effect, using paint and collage. Then, they looked at some of Alma Thomas’ artwork, thought about the colours and patterns used and created some art in their sketchbooks inspired by the pieces they had seen. Each child used both paint and collage to recreate a mosaic technique.

The Great Wave

Year 2 looked at ‘The Great Wave’ by the artist Hokusai which linked to our theme of ‘Land Ahoy!’. The children thought about the colours and shapes that they could see in the piece and explored this in their sketchbooks. They experimented with colours by using the colouring pencils to blend and shade and ‘The Great Wave’.

Our final piece

Year 2 were given the brief of creating a piece of artwork inspired by ‘The Great Wave’ in the style of Alma Thomas. Each child chose from either paint or collage and created their final piece. The children all tried their best to mix and select paint or materials that they could see in ‘The Great Wave’, as well as thinking about the shapes of the water, all while using a mosaic technique like Alma Thomas.

Evaluating our work

To finish our sequence of lessons, the children evaluated their final piece by answering question about their work. They wrote about what went well and what they could improve on next time, as well as comparing their work to ‘The Great Wave’ and Alma Thomas.