The National Gallery’s 'Take One Picture' Initiative Inspires Years 3, 4 and 5

The Junior School has a long tradition of entering the highly regarded National Gallery’s 'Take One Picture' initiative, a national programme for primary schools which aims to inspire a lifelong love of art and learning.  Each year the Gallery takes one picture from its collection to inspire cross-curricular work in classrooms across the UK.

Ahead of this year’s event we’ve taken a closer look at the artworks planned by Years 3, 4 and 5.  Mr Roberts-Wray, Art Co-Ordinator at the Junior School, reports on their progress.

Year 5 have been busy using plaster bandage to make sculptures of soldiers, horses and lances as part of our entry to this year’s ‘Take One Picture’ scheme, using as our inspiration, the Gallery’s ‘The Battle of San Romano’ by Uccello, showing the Florentine victory at San Romano in 1432.. 

An armature strong enough to hold the weight of the plaster was needed first. Pupils made this by drilling into a wooden base and inserting dowels and solid art straws. They then worked in pairs to apply the plaster bandage, shaping it to the right forms, but also trying to convey different feelings. Once dry, some painted their work black to create two opposing sides, a bit like a chess set, or the black and white horses in the original painting. 

Year 3 has focused on the metal pendants found on the harnesses of the horses in the painting. After creating interesting patterns, the children transferred their design onto metal with an embossing tool, before sewing them on to a felt background. 

Year 4’s looked at the foreshortened figure of a soldier on the ground. As this is a tricky view to draw we took photographs of each other lying in this position to assist us. After making a coloured tissue background we then used the photographs to create a monoprint on top of each one. The final stage was to add shadow under each figure, using black acrylic paint.

The children’s work will be submitted to the National Gallery at the end of term; selected schools are then invited to display work in a special exhibition in London later next year.

You can view images of the children developing their artwork below.

Flickr album: Take One Picture - Junior School | Height: auto | Theme: Default