Year 3 Botanical Art
Year 3 have been busy studying the work of female botanist and photographer, Anna Atkins. We began the project by reading the picture book 'The Bluest of Blues' written by Fiona Robinson and looking at a range of artefacts to enhance the project and gather the interest of the children.
We were very lucky as Mrs Hetherington’s parents came into school to show us a large collection of cameras which they had collected over the years. We had lots of fun exploring how to use them and pretending to take photos of each other!
We began by collecting a range of plants from our school grounds, discussing their names and where they have been found in our local environment. We recapped our scientific knowledge and discussed the function of the leaves, flowers and roots and looked carefully at our specimens.
The children then used a range of blue art materials to draw their plants. We discussed what an observational drawing was and recapped our learning on adding detail to drawings and using different marks to show the texture of the object.
The children then created a repeated print using foam board. We talked about creating an imprint into the foam which would then produce a relief print when ink was added to the surface. We also discussed the similarities and differences between using foam board to create an image compared to using the cyanotype method.
The children then spent great time and care to create a mono print of an allium flower head. We rubbed oil pastel onto the back of our image and carefully pressed the image through using a biro pen.
The children then collected more natural objects from our school grounds and were taught how to roll out a slab of clay. Once we had imprinted the plants into the clay, the children rolled it to form a vessel. We added a base using slip and left our vessels to dry slowly in the classroom. We were then able to add acrylic paint. We painted the background of the vase first and then carefully added paint into the imprint using a different colour. We chose blue and white because it reminded us of the work created by Anna Atkins. We also looked at the work of contemporary ceramics artist, Louise Condon (ceramic botanist) for inspiration.
We had to wait for the sun to shine but we managed to create our own cyanotypes using sun paper, natural items, water and the sun. This really brought to life what we had learnt about Anna Atkins and her way of documenting her collections.
