Theme Three: Design Goes Pop!
Teachers’ Notes are ideas for activities and are designed to be adapted for different Key Stages. The activities hopefully provide an assortment of different ideas which teachers can pick and choose from and make their own.
Teachers’ notes
Introduce the terms Op Art, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. What are the characteristics of each movement? Students can do their own research, finding out features, key artists and images related to each.
Activity One: Overview
Allocate pairs of students Op Art, Pop Art or Abstract Expressionism. Give them key images related to each movement so that stylistically they have a reference. Tell them they have to select between 6 and 10 fabric designs for an exhibition on their given art movement. Which fabrics would they chose and why?
Discuss the similarities in style (colour, size, mark-making, form) or subject (mass media, geometry, landscape)
Discuss the relationship between a painter and a designer. Do they work in different ways? (see Theme: Pattern and Paint for more discussion prompts)
Variations:
· Print off as many images as possible from this learning journey, including the ones chosen for this study theme, if you are not able to visit the exhibition
Activity Two: Furniture Design
Look at Bernard Holdaway’s sketches for nursery furniture and images of the tables, chairs from the tomotom range. Introduce that the furniture pieces are all based on a circular motif and are made from cardboard tubes. The shapes are cut out from tubular or circular forms and are therefore child-friendly and can be formed into stackable units. The bright colours, bold shapes and cheap materials are typical of a youthful 60s pop style.
Part One:
Give pupils images from magazines of interiors. These can be contemporary or from the 1960s or any other period. Use these as found ‘drawing paper’. Students draw shapes from the furniture using a thick line (pen or pencil) so it will show up over the magazine image. Encourage students to look at the furniture from different angles and to make the drawings without taking their pen/pencil off the paper. Explore the outline and curves and try and capture the ‘pop’ aesthetic.
Part Two:
Bring in a selection of everyday objects – fruit, kitchen utensils, office items such as a hole punch etc. Students draw the object or part of it using a viewfinder. Encourage students to explore form rather than surface detail. Students have to use their drawings as a starting point to come up with a piece of furniture based on the object. For example, a computer mouse might become a comfy sofa, a pen a light stand. Use Holdaway’s nursery drawings as inspiration.
Activity Three: Questioning Images
As a group, look at one of the fabrics chosen below. Introduce the fact that these are hand screen-printed and that one design is repeated throughout the print. Explain that the design would have been created by the artist-designer on paper before being produced on a screen for printing. The original design could have been a drawing, collage or painting.
Divide the class into pairs or small groups. Give each pair or group one of these pairs of images or works to focus on:
Ziminy One, Richard Allen (1967)
Centrum, Molly White (1966)
Roundel, Roger Limbrick (1964)
Five, Shirley Craven (1967)
Memories, Shirley Craven (1970)
Palace, Roger Limbrick, (1966)
Sigma, Elizabeth Armstrong (1961)
Grannie, Natalie Gibson (1967)
Students ‘brainstorm’ their thoughts by writing words or thoughts on big sheets of paper in response to these questions. Students will be comparing the two images, looking at similarities and differences based on these questions.
1. What can you see in the image?
· Describe the colours. Try and be specific, i.e. pale yellowy green, deep blue
· Draw the shapes you can see.
· What would the image be like to touch, i.e. scratchy, soft?
· How is the image arranged? Which shapes or colours stand out? Which sit back?
· Which parts of the image attract your attention?
· How would you describe the movement or ‘rhythms’ in the image?
2. What does the image remind you of? Where do you think the inspiration could have come from?
3. What do you like about this image? What don’t you like? Which of the two images do you prefer and why?
Each group presents their answers to the rest of the class. Use this as an opportunity to discuss students’ differing views and for students who hadn’t focused on these images to make a contribution.
Activity Four: Creating a Design Sheet
Students choose 2 or 3 fabrics from those looked at by the whole class (see above) as starting points. They are to create a ‘design sheet’ which looks at other sources for inspiration, i.e. magazines, packaging, cut out shapes (gummed paper), wrapping paper, stencils, toys, graph papers, coloured papers, crayons, felt tips.
Combining collage and drawings, students develop their own motifs and designs for fabric. The pages should be an eclectic mix of observations and stuck on ‘inspiration’ designs. Creating a design sheet will be a way of working through ideas and eventually coming up with a design motif and colourway. Encourage students to keep going back to look at the different colourways in the designs and to experiment with which colours go together.
Share the different design sheets as part of a group feedback session at the end.
Variation: Students can work in pairs to create the design sheet. The designs can be for either a piece of fabric or furniture
Extended Project Work
These activities extend learning and ideas generated through an exhibition visit, or a study of images from the exhibition. They build on, or incorporate activities suggested in the Teachers’ Notes. Activities follow a scheme of work model and can be delivered over a half-term period.
Part One: Students research Op, Pop and Abstract Expressionist movements and present to the rest of the class. Alternatively, a scrap book of images and research material can be made as a visual representation of the movements.
Part Two: Students collect different packaging, magazine pages, text, postcards, colouring book papers, wrapping paper and wallpaper or any other ‘found’ papers which they think represent the ‘pop’ aesthetic. This can be in the 60s-style or more contemporary. Use the papers as drawing pages. Using one thick, continuous line draw furniture, objects, views or figures in a simple pop-style (look at Lichenstein and other pop artists for inspiration).
As a variation, students can draw their subject first then trace it, thus simplifying the original drawing. The tracing can be transferred to the ‘found’ drawing pages, thus taking the student through a process of simplification
Part Three: Students design pieces of furniture either based on simple geometric forms (circles, squares, triangles, spheres, tubes) or derived from everyday objects. Students draw the original object or play around with ‘opening up’ the shapes, viewing it from different angles etc. Use one sheet of paper for sketching out ideas and working out what different forms can be transformed into furniture.
Part Four: Using graph paper, tessellation shapes, circular and geometric templates, play about with different geometric patterns. Look at Grannie and Above the Clouds as inspiration. Maybe use flowers or natural forms as inspiration. Coloured shapes can be cut out of tissue paper or coloured gum paper to create geometric designs.
Part Five: Use letters, diagrammatic shapes (hearts, dots, diamonds), negative shapes traced from magazines etc as starting points for developing new shapes and designs. Overlay the different shapes and drawings on the tracing papers to produce new shapes. Can a motif be developed from these drawings? Try and create a ‘self-contained’ motif which could be used as a repeat pattern design.
Part Six: Students can create their own pop-inspired motif based on any of the exercises above. Cut out the motif as a template and arrange it on a large piece of paper in different repeat pattern variations. The motif can be drawn round or photocopied and placed on the sheet to get a sense of the overall design. Use simple screen-printing techniques, collographs, lino-cuts or mono-printing (see ‘Simple Screen-printing in the Classroom’) to create the repeat pattern. The pattern can be worked into using tissue paper, paint and mixed media to create the overall look. Discuss the qualities and effectiveness of the different print-making processes and which designs work best as a ‘repeat pattern.’
Resource provided by www.mylearning.org Ó Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums