KS3 ART Year 9 - Royton and Crompton Academy

KS3 ART Year 9

Unit title/key question: How can we use colour, shape and line to create a surrealist piece? Term: All on rotation Number of hours:

Sequence of learning: Scaffolding for SEND pupils: Deepening learning:

Component 1: What is Surrealism?

Introduce students to the project and the concept of surrealism. Students have primarily been working in realism, with some stylised elements in their art education so far, however they now will look at surrealism in depth.

Surrealism is a style of painting/drawing/art that has realistic looking elements in it but in a surreal setting. It is designed to make you look at it and think “that’s not quite right is it?”. Salvador Dali, a very famous surrealist we are going to study, often put things in his paintings from his dreams. Which describes what surrealism is nicely, like looking at a dream.

Why do you think surrealism as an artform exists? Artists are naturally creative; it is unsurprising that at some point they would use their dreams as inspiration. Artists particularly, the modern art movement, have always wanted to push boundaries and experiment with what is considered “art”, surrealists achieved this with colour experiments and odd scenes.

Students will then look at the work of De Chirico. Another Surrealist painter with a very different style to Dali’s.

Students will view videos about surrealism and complete guided viewing questions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp2PRA0qaD4

Students will create a composition using elements of Dali and De Chirico’s work – creating a De Chirico inspired background design with elements of Dali and surrealism layered in front.

Background

Why is De Chirico’s style still surrealist when it is subtler than Dali’s?

De Chirico’s work is still surrealist as he uses a strange compositional style of architecture, statues and background elements to put together a scene that, while it doesn’t stand out as completely dream realm strange like Dali’s it still has an eerie unusual quality to it, particularly the way he designs rolling desert landscapes, which almost gives the feeling that his paintings are designed to be mirages; dreams seen by overheated travellers in the middle of the desert.

Students will recap knowledge from Year 7 Art & Graphics by creating an A3 background design using one-point perspective.

Similar to other DT subjects they will start with thumbnail planning, students will focus on having a high horizon line in the style of De Chirico with simplistic building elements in the front using reference images for their working.

Thumbnail Sketching

Once students have the basic elements of their ideas together, they will

move onto beginning their design. They will start this by using a design

technique of thumbnail sketches.

-What key design elements do you need to feature in your thumbnail and

what details can be left until later in your planning?

-applying the correct amount of pressure of their pencil; showing different

elements through tone.

-taking into consideration composition of each element

Students will recap on brush skills they have learned about over the course of KS3 (BRUSH SKILLS HERE) and will build upon their knowledge of using paint from Year 7 to mixing and using acrylic paint, a more complex medium than poster paint they are used to using. (MORE ABOUT PAINT MIXING)

Provide pupils with exemplars to support.

Component 2: How do we use distortion to create surrealism?

Students will complete an A4 study of a household object of their choice on

a grid, they will use their skills of observation and their knowledge of tone

and shape.

Students will look first at Dali’s “Persistence of Memory” and how he used

distortion of everyday objects to create a dream like scene.

Students will take their grid drawing and will use a distorted mirror to

create a new distorted grid in which they will redraw their household

object, so it is distorted in a surrealist way.

Teacher exemplar provided Students are able to select their own object based on ability.

What do you think the use of clocks in Dali’s “Persistence of Memory” represents? The dripping clocks could represent the idea of the fluidity or fleetingness of time, that it slips away without you even noticing. However, with the title of the painting it could represent the difficulty in forgetting a painful memory, that time does nothing when you have a bad memory as it continues to persist. Students are able to select their own object based on ability.

Component 3: How do we use colour to create surrealism?

Looking at the work of De Chirico students will work on using colour to

create a surrealist element of their design.

They will use cakes and sweets as their reference points as they typically

have brighter colours to work with so when colours are inverted or distorted

it creates a surrealist image.

Students will complete an A3 sheet with a range of studies of cakes and

sweets laid out in front of them. Students will revisit schema from Year 7

and 8 of drawing from observation considering particularly shape, line and

texture. Students will then choose their most successful drawing to recreate

in their final piece.

Shape – What is the sweet shaped like? When broken down into basic

shapes what is it made of?

Line – What is the quality of your line? Is it thin or thick? Patchy and

sketched or more precise?

Texture – what is the texture of the sweet/sponge of the cake/icing? How

could it be represented visually?

Students will recap their knowledge of colour theory in this part of the

project, thinking about using contrasting colours to create a surrealist

effect.

Contrasting colours are the colours directly opposite one another on the

colour wheel, they are the true opposite of one another.

Knowledge organisers provided for key vocabulary. Colour wheel provided to students to allow them to see colours rather than visualise them.

Why do we have to keep practicing drawing from observation? The hand muscles are fine motor muscles and need to be exercised like any other muscle. They retain muscle memory that allows them to do things like “remember” how much pressure to apply to a pencil when building shade and tone.

Students have studied primary and secondary colours in Year 7, in this

project they will be introduced to tertiary colours:

Tertiary colours are made from mixing a primary colour with a secondary

colour. Hence the names blue-green, yellow-green etc.

Component 4: How can we use scale to create surrealism?

Students will use a hand reference sheet to create a drawing of an

“impossible” object in a hand to show surrealism through scale. Students

will be able to play with the idea of scale, that previously in art they have

“played to the rules”

Surrealism opens itself to a range

of styles, this allows students to

experiment with a style they might

find more comfortable

When students have completed all of the elements of their composition,

they will use the individual pieces they have worked on to make a layered

3D surrealist design that incorporates elements of the inspiration they have

gained from De Chirico and Dali’s work

Component 5: Evaluation of work

Pupils will use their knowledge organisers to evaluate their final drawings.

They will answer the following questions:

In this unit we have been learning about …

Our aim was to make …

The tasks I found difficult about this project were…

The reasons I found this difficult were…

If I were to make this project again the changes I might make are…

Overall, I am pleased/not pleased with my work in this topic this is

because…

Pupils complete end of topic key vocab spelling test

Students review each-others work at the end of the project, giving

feedback on one another’s work using specialist terminology.

Provide written prompts to be able

to form opinions of own work

How did you develop and improve your compositional ideas?

What were the challenges and

how did you respond to them?

Knowledge &

vocabulary

Substantive knowledge

• Colour Theory

• Knowledge of surrealism

• Formal elements of art; shape, colour, tone, scale

Disciplinary knowledge

• Project management

• Working to a brief

• Artist analysis

Vocabulary

• Surrealism

• Dada movement

• Scale

• Tone

• Shape

• Composition

• Perspective

Subject methods

and resources

• Booklet with reference images provided • Knowledge organisers • Additional sheets outlined and provided

for scaffolding. • Artistic equipment provided.

Prior Knowledge

▪ Study of colour theory in Year 7 & shape and line

▪ Year 7&8 observational drawing. ▪ Working with tone and values in year 7

Graphics ▪ Artist analytical skills developed from

looking at the Singh Sisters and Ian Murphy.

Assessment of

components and

summative assessment

of the unit (composite).

Likely

misconceptions and

suggested strategies

to tackling them