Something that looks like it is made of water

Something that looks like it was made in nature

A form that has been created and grown in particular conditions

A form that has been created in nature without any human intervention

A form that is made of 100% natural materials

A form that looks like it is natural because it is irregular, flowing and potentially unpredictable

Chakaia Booker is known for creating monumental, abstract works

Chakaia Booker's artwork does not have a biomorphic appearance

Chakaia Booker's artwork is inspired by natural forms

Which of these statements about Chakaia Booker is correct?

Sir Anish Kapoor designed the London 2012 Olympics stadium

Sir Anish Kapoor is best known for creating small scale private sculptures

Sir Anish Kapoor’s work has a fluid shape and form which gives the hard materials used an organic feel

Which of these statements about Sir Anish Kapoor is true?

Creating a sculpture inspired by natural forms

Key Stage 3

Art and design

3D sculpture: developing fine motor skills

To make a square from a rectangular piece of paper you need to:

Your artwork from today's lesson could be described as:

What is the correct term for the skills that let you coordinate between your eyes and your hands, to create precise, detailed work?

﻿- Hi everyone. And welcome to today's lesson with me, Mr. LaSalvo. Today, we're going to be creating a sculpture that's inspired by natural forms. So today you're going to need the following equipment. You're going to need glue, paper, pencil, and some scissors. And please pause the video now and go and collect those resources. Okay, welcome back. So today's lesson, hopefully you've already completed your intro quiz. We're going to look a bit at two artists who we're going to begin looking at, and then we're going to look at them again in a future lesson, but we're going to kind of introduce their work to you. And they are Chakaia Booker and Anish Kapoor. We're going to look at natural forms and the inspiration for my work and our work today, and we're then going to create our sculpture. And then we're going to have our exit quiz at the end of the lesson. So the keywords for today's lesson. Biomorphic. And that word means a life form or lifelike, and it comes from combining the Greek words bios, meaning life, and morph, meaning form. Organic and any organic forms look natural and they are irregular and may seem flowing and unpredictable. So the idea of something looking organic doesn't necessarily mean it is organic, but something can look organic. And the last word for today is biotic, meaning it's relating or resulting from living organisms. So something being biotic. And there are words that we're gonna use to look at A, for our artists work, and B, then to inspire our own work today. So the first artist I'd like to introduce you to or talk about certainly is Chakaia Booker, a sculptor. Born in 1953 in New York, sorry, in Newark in New Jersey. And is internationally renowned. So really famous artist and widely collected. And Chakaia Booker is known for creating monumental, so huge scale, abstract works. And you can see one example of her work there, actually created using recycled tyres. And although her work is not inspired by natural forms, it certainly has a biomorphic quality to it. So it certainly looks like it could be some kind of living organism. And a really fascinating artist in terms of the medium that she uses. So that example there she created with recycled tyres, and they have an interesting kind of texture which she's really fascinated by. And also the artist herself, you can see her there. She wears, she's known for wearing these huge head dresses, which that's kind of like a statement thing that she wears, it's like she's a living artwork herself, which is very fascinating. The second artist we're going to look at today is Sir Anish Kapoor, who is a sculptor. And he was born in 1954 in Mumbai in India. He's best known for creating large scale, public sculptures. That example there is actually in London. It was create for the 2012 Olympics. And it's a huge artwork. You can just about make out the people there in that picture to show the scale of that. Now interesting about his work is it is often described as having a fluid shape and a form which gives the hard materials used an organic feel. So you wouldn't think this sculpture here is made out of steel, and you wouldn't think of it as being organic in terms of material. But he has been able to take that material, like metal, and twist it and turn it and make it appear almost fluid and organic. And we're gonna take the idea of organic sculptures in our work today. Now we're going to be looking at natural forms and exploring this idea of paper manipulation. A very simple resource, but one we can use in some great ways. Now, in terms of what are natural forms? We've got a different definition there for us. And so natural forms are objects you find in nature, and here's just an example. They could be leaves, flowers, insects, feathers, fish, et cetera. And so it's any form that you see in nature. So today we're going to look at this idea of natural forms, organic, biomorphic, biotic, and kind of combine it all together. Now on the screen now you can see that there are some sort of quite standard examples of natural forms. Again, we're going to say that we're inspired by it, but we're not going to try to create a sculpture of a flower or of a leaf. We're going to just take some of those shapes in our work and create something which has got a link to it. So in the centre screen, you can see my example, my sculpture. And maybe you can hopefully spot elements of kind of references points. Be it the centre of the rose there, or maybe the petals of the leaf or the splashing of water, or the tree-like qualities. So again, not trying to create a sculpture of a flower or plant, but rather the idea of natural forms. So as ever with our sculptures, please, don't be tempted to throw anything away. Take your time by making it. You'll see in a few minutes time where I'm making mine. I make all the components, all the parts of my sculpture. I don't necessarily use all of them. And it's really important that you be aware it's better to have too many, lots of pieces made, and then just choose the best pieces that you would like to include in your sculpture. And again, if you need to practise, then do that. Make the pieces more than once if you need to, if you're not happy with them. We're going to try to use just the best pieces that we create today. Okay, so we're going to begin. Now, let me just open up my video, and we're going to just do a look at that now. So I'm really just going to talk you through what I did. So the first thing we've got here is I decide to make all of the components or I've taken the very simple resource that we've got, paper, and I'm thinking about natural forms, and thinking about those images that we used for our work. So all I'm doing here, and again, I'm not going to use all of these. What I'm doing though is I'm rolling to see if I can make shapes. Flower stems, tubes, just using a pencil to help me with my work, and just looking there at how I can create various natural forms. So really simple ideas that you'll see me kind of go through. And again, I'm going to just use some of those rather than all of those. The idea of a flower, sort of tear drop sort of shape, and again, how simple that can be. So just repeating one shape lots and lots and lots. And again, we learn as we create this, and so there's this sense of, okay, I've got a shape. Could I use it once or twice? Is there a sense of where it comes from? And I think that has got a flower-like quality. And again, this is what I'd like you to do today. So once I finish my demonstration, I would really like you to have a go. Here I've decided that what I'd like to do is try and use some more curved, again, organic forms. So biomorphic, biotic. Try and think about this idea of it being organic. And again, it doesn't matter about the number of pieces you make or not using all of them. I would much rather you have all of the components at hand, and then you can begin to sculpt it. Now, I decided here to look at the idea of water droplets. So you know when you drop a stone in the water and you get those rings that appear that kind of spread out? So I realised if I cut the centre of a piece of paper out, I could make a series of circles gradually getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so what was a quite simple idea has really given me a really nice pattern, which is organic, and then I can... And again, just always considering now as I make my piece of work, could that work? How would that work? How would I attach it together? And again, this is that process that as artists we need to do. We need to make things, try things, incorporate the best elements. If something does work, wonderful. If it doesn't work, that's fine. We've learned something. And again, just a real simple resource. And again, it's about that paper manipulation. Taking simple ideas, repetition of shape. So in terms of how is this inspired by natural forms? Could be a water droplet. Could be almost a feather from a bird. And again, we don't have those things probably at hand. It would be surprising if we did. And we understand these elements of nature and how we can use those. And again, all I'm going through now is, and you can be aware, that all of these pieces, some have worked and some haven't, and that's absolutely fine. But what we need to do is look at what we have got at hand. So paper is hopefully a resource that we've all got. And little ideas like I want to make a spiral. So I wondered how I could use a pencil or something to twist around my paper. And really just see which forms would work for me. And again, once I've tried something and I thought actually I wonder if I could make more of a sort of spiral that would be an interesting kind of shape that could almost be like a wave or such that was coming in the sea. So really, really important that we do just that. We make these components. And again, once we've got all of them, we can then start to adjust it. Now, I realised that I could curl paper just by tearing it. With that flat piece of paper there, that if I just tore it with enough force, I would get this lovely torn edge, which I think looks quite organic. But also I'd get these series of spirals. And again, it's not so it's going to be a flower or it's going to be anything, but certainly they have a quality. And again, just as I'm working, I'm just thinking out loud to myself now. What could this be? Do I like this? And I thought actually this kind of randomness has that biomorphic, sort of biotic, organic feel to it. It has that sense of it being something which is really, really quite unusual and irregular. And that was one of those key points, was about it being irregular, something that's organic. And again, I sort of made it and thought, this is a really, really kind of interesting shape. It has this kind of identity of its own and I could only control it to an extent. And now I'm starting to find my components and think, "Well how will this work?" And again, like with any composition, remember a composition is an arrangement of elements in an artwork. I'm just thinking would that work? Where's my focal point? Do I need to balance out the shapes? So some of these really didn't work. It wasn't going to work as an idea, quite frankly. But we have to try, though. Understand that it's not that it's gone wrong, it's just rather that we've learned something about our work. And again, then I looked at the idea of maybe having a spiral. So I thought when I cut a spiral, when you think about spirals in nature, it could be as an organic, natural form, it could be from a sea shell. You would see spirals. Maybe it's reminiscent of sort of rings in a tree. There's lots of elements that we can do. And again, from that I thought actually if I then take the idea of the spiral and then roll it up, I'm going to have this kind of like rather kind of quite nice, flower-like quality. And again, I think it's kind of like very flower-like centre from that rose. So I've got all my elements now. And what I'm trying to do now is think about, okay, what can I make? How can I arrange this composition? Will it hang? Will I have a form like that's like a plant? Like a tree? Is it random? Because random is good in terms of organic and natural. And I just now as I said that, I'm just now starting to put the piece together. I'm working out the kind of limitations of our product. By that I mean what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to think about, okay, well how, how will it hang? Will some pieces work because of the balance? Or will it make it really unstable? And as you can see here, I'm sort of laying these out now and just trying to work out the sort of composition again. It's really, really important that we really, really understand as artists we need to try things. If they don't work, that's fine. We haven't failed, we've just learned another lesson in terms of what we can do next time. Or what not to do next time. And you can see here now, just some photographs of the finished piece as it hangs. I'm just going to pause there so you can get a sense of that. And then we're going to get on with our task today of creating our sculptures. So you can see there that the zoomed in different components of our artwork. So I would like you, please, to create your sculpture. Remember, we're going to use natural forms as your inspiration. You can use the natural forms I've given us on the slide, you can find your own ones, using what you see outside or your own images. But I would like you now to pause the video and create your sculpture. Okay, welcome back. So you've done that, and it's now time for a what went well, even better if. So what went well? so I'm really kind of happy with my work, because it's inspired by natural forms. I'm happy that I think the sculpture has evidence of my sort of technical skills, you know, my ability to sculpt and to manipulate paper. And I do think that what's successful about it, it's got a variety of different shapes. So it's not all just one series of spikes or leafs. I think it's got all of those elements. Now, even better ifs. What are my even better ifs? So I think I could make a stronger link to the artists that we looked at. It would be an improvement for me next time. I think that I'd like to use a wider range material. So paper was great for me today, but I think I want to extend the work even further. And again, being more experimental, taking more risks. And I think the paper was a great option to use, but I'm thinking next trying some cardboard. Could I go bigger with it? Could I be a bit braver with it, or make a series of things? I would like you now to pause the video and write down two things that went well, and two things that you think you could do better. And if you can, please try and include the keywords that you've learned from today's lesson. Pause the video, and then complete the task now. Okay, so welcome back. Now, extension task for you. If you would like to, I think it'd be great for you as an extension task to push your work even further. And that's try and photograph your sculpture. So look at projecting lights onto it and see that you can kind of cast shadows on the wall behind it. You could even make a drawing of your sculpture or drawing of just the shadow. So this is the idea of extending our work even further. If you can and you want to, please now attempt the extension task and then resume the video once you're finished. Okay, and welcome back. So that's it for today, for today's lesson. And it's now time for you to take the end of lesson quiz, and see you next time. Goodbye.

Creating a sculpture inspired by natural forms

Creating a sculpture inspired by natural forms

No lesson available

Lesson appears in

UnitArt and design / 3D sculpture: developing fine motor skills

Art and design