Utilise your abstract shapes, inspired by sound, in a developed art piece

Key Stage 2

Art and design

Digital / new media

﻿Hello and welcome to the third lesson in this unit on new media. My name's Simon and we've been looking at the different types of new media. So far, we looked at pixel art and we looked at sound art. This one develops your work from the last lesson and uses those shapes and forms. So we've got a lot to get through, I hope you're ready to get stuck in. Make sure you have your pencils and your paints ready to do some more new media artwork. Okay, so for lesson three, the learning objective is to utilise your abstract shapes inspired by sound in a developed art piece. This is the third of five lessons. So last lesson we created these initial shapes and patterns, which we listened to sound and we created those shapes and patterns by listening through those sounds. This week, we're going to use those sounds and make a bigger art piece, so we're going to develop our work. In today's lesson, we are going to recap the previous lesson on sound art and abstract forms. We're going to select shapes, patterns and designs from the previous lesson and we're going to enlarge them. We're going to develop our work using watercolour and tone, and we're then going to refine the work by using a fine line pen. Now, obviously the materials, watercolour, fine line pen, are kind of an obvious one, but they are things which you can still use if you're using colouring pencils. You can still take part if you've just got colouring pencils. The keywords is tone, is when you create different shades that are darker and lighter. Definition is when you use a material to ensure that a line is clear, strong and bold. Finally, abstract art, and this is art that is non-representational and might use colour, shape, line and pattern. And we discussed abstract art in the last lesson and we're going to discuss it more today. So the equipment you're going to need for this lesson is as follows. You will need a sketchbook, your work obviously from your previous lesson from that sketchbook will be really what you need it for, a pencil, and you'll need some paints, and obviously a brush and a paint pot. But of course don't worry, if you don't have paints to hand, you can do this lesson using colouring pencils. My demonstration will obviously be with paints, but you can use colouring pencils to follow the same instructions. So this is an abstract art piece called "Swinging" by Wassily Kandinsky. Now, when did we create abstract shapes, patterns and designs? So we've already created abstract shapes, patterns and designs, so when did we create them? That's right, we did it in the last lesson. We actually created some designs by listening to sound, and Kandinsky was inspired by sound too. His work is abstract, but what is abstract art? That's right, it's non-representational work, it's shapes, patterns and colours, and not actual physical objects or people or anything like that. Now, sound art, in the last lesson, we created shapes, patterns and symbols that were inspired by art. And is that sound art? No. And the reason why is because, now, you might know this before I say it, yeah, it's because sound art is art using sound to create a soundscape or a sound place. And you'll need a recording equipment to be able to do that. Our art is effectively an abstract art piece that is inspired by sound. So it is slightly different there, and it's important to get that distinction because sound art is part of new technology. And the idea of using sound to create an art piece is different to creating a painting or a colouring pencil drawing that is inspired by sound. But that is what we're doing, we're creating an art piece inspired by sound. Now, you can see there, unlike sound art, your work is an art piece, a painting perhaps, inspired by sound, and not created by sound, that's the clear difference there. Kandinsky, he was inspired by sound himself, he believed shades resonated with each other to produce visual chords and had an influence on the soul. And the idea that chords and music and art has all something very similar is something Kandinsky was tapping into. He wanted his art pieces to be like symphonies, to be like music, to lift those spirits. And he felt that certain shapes had a correlation, a connection with chords and sounds in music. Our activity today is going to be able to take those symbols and patterns and drawings we did last lesson and develop them into a bigger art piece. Now, you can obviously do this in your sketchbook, but you can also do this on separate paper. So that's up to you. It does mean that this piece is going to be something you could frame if it was on a separate piece of paper, but that's up to you, if that's what you'd like to do. The first task is we're going to choose from those shapes, patterns and designs from last week and we're going to draw them onto a larger A3 sheet of paper. Now, this could be watercolour paper if you have it. It could be in your sketchbook if that's all you have to hand, it's just making sure we've got a fresh piece of paper to take those patterns from last week and use into this week's work. Okay, so from the last lesson, you should have something like this, and you can see that what I've got here are my sounds, which obviously inspired these shapes and patterns. So what I'd like you to do today, you're obviously going to use these and actually put them into your work here. So I'm going to be looking at that, thinking to myself, how can I take these and put them into a brand new art piece here? Now, this means it is an abstract piece, so I'm going to be playing around with this as I go. So let's see how I can add some of these shapes, and again, of course when you're using your pencil lightly, again, you are going to paint over this, so don't go too fast. And again, of course you can change the shapes as you. You are adapting your work so that it is not the same thing again and again. You can see I've taken these from all these shapes and patterns, and ideas come from the sounds and the abstract shapes and patterns which I created in the last lesson. You can see I might even have these. That's my paper rustling pattern, and then I can see here, I might even want to have something like this down here. Again, just enjoy the line and how you kind of create them one bit at a time. We'll be able to use these in different ways later. You can see also I've got this shape here from my Sellotape, I'm going to have to incorporate that somehow. So I'm going to try and just add that just up here. Here, here, and the last one I've got to do, can see you which one I haven't done yet? This one here, so I'm going to incorporate that as well and that's going to be a little bit down there. So these triangles. And that's going to be what I'm going to use for my abstract art piece inspired by sound. Now it's your turn. You need to draw your shapes and designs onto a larger piece of paper or into your sketchbook. Use your work and designs from the previous lesson and make them bigger to fit the page. And think carefully about that size, if it's too small, it'll be very difficult to paint and complete. So think about making sure that all these shapes and patterns are bigger than the ones you did in last week's lesson. Pause the video now to complete the task. Well done, we're going to move on now to the next part of the activity. You should have already drawn your design. This time, you're going to add watercolour paint and vary the tones by using more or less water. Consider how black lines will be used to finish the work. Now, don't add these dark tones yet, okay, don't start painting these black lines because we're going to do them later. You can see on the screen in front of you, there is a picture there with black lines, that's what it will look like later. The only thing you're going to worry about at the moment is painting on those colours. I'm going to show you how to do that in a demonstration. Okay, when adding colour, we have to be quite careful with how we do this. Obviously what's lovely about the work you're doing is that you can choose the colours. You might want to stick with the colours which you used in the first time, you might want to change them. And you can see how I'm going to add the colours first. Now, when you're doing this, try your best to stick to the lines, but don't feel like you have to. This is an abstract art piece so it can be quite flexible with how this kind of comes together. You can see how that's working. Now, the paper I'm using is a kind of special watercolour paper so it'll actually hold the paint much better than if I didn't. You see how that's coming around there, using that paint, gently swooping around here. And again, artists find inspiration in all sorts of different things, and of course sound is without a doubt a huge inspiration to artists who work with paint and with different mediums as well, so. You're already working like an artist if you are using sound as your influence. A word of advice when you start off is to make sure that you're using the water to get these lovely tones. Don't just keep going back to the paint pot, use the water as you add those colours to it. Now, the water can be really helpful with what you're doing. You can obviously use a range of colours, and it is also nice to make sure that you do have some tones. And how you're going to be able to get that is by painting a little bit of paint at the top there, and we'll do the same on this side here. Two at the same time. Then I'm going to wash my brush, make sure it's absolutely clean so there's barely anything on it, I'm going to just blend it out and try and get it as light as possible. You can see I've gone back to the water then to do that. And I'm doing the same here, you can see it kind of bleeds into the water to make it much, much, much lighter. And again, coming down just like so. You can see that range. Now, again, I want to remind you that I haven't done any dark tones, and I won't do the dark tones until the very end. As you can see, I've got a little bit further now. I've actually filled in the main bulk of the colours, but there's obviously lots of blank space in the background. This is where you can be really quite creative with how your design actually looks. You can obviously include lots of different tones around shapes as well, don't feel like they have to be exclusively on the shapes or in the shapes. You could actually have a lovely kind of wash in the background of one colour gently changing to another. Now your turn. Use your sound experiment drawings in a larger art piece. Now, be careful with how much or how little water you use and try not to use too many dark tones because we're going to add the black later and that's going to be the last stage. Pause the video now and complete your painting. Well done, now you're going to have to let it dry. If you don't let it dry, what can happen is if you're using a black pen, then it can bleed into the water and it'll spread in ways that you can't control. So you need to make sure that your work is completely dry before you move onto this next stage. You're going to add black line and you're going to use a black pen or black paint if you've got a very thin brush and you're going to vary the thickness of the lines to create contrast and suggest shadow. Again, I'm going to do a demonstration to show you how to do this, but you do need to be quite careful to get this right. Okay, when you think your work is dry then obviously just double check, just gentle place your hand on it. If you can feel it's wet, then of course gently raise your hand and just maybe just wait a little bit longer. You can see, and I'll kind of direct you a little bit closer, you can see that there are some areas here that aren't particularly neat. See for example this area here, these edges aren't particularly tidy and this one here. Now, don't get me wrong, if you can do them neatly, by all means do them, but the idea now will be actually to add definition with pen or with a black colouring pencil. So you can see here, I can actually go over this line and I can sharpen it up really neatly. Suddenly gives that definition to your work, and those little messy lines, you can actually change them so they look a little bit more tidy. Okay, now, of course when you look nice and close there, it kind of looks maybe a little bit lonely, those black lines. But of course we're going to be going over all the lines, so again you've got to do this carefully. You can do this with black colouring pencil, there's nothing stopping you from using colouring pencil and you are welcome if you're very brave to use a very thin paintbrush and use black paint. But if you've got a fine line pen, this is probably the fastest way to add definition to your work. Now, this is obviously a abstract image which is based on the sounds that we heard in the last lesson. So you can see there's a little bit of flexibility with how things go, and sometimes you can actually thicken a line so that it almost hints at a sense of kind of shadow to your work. So you can see, I'm kind of adding these slightly thicker lines here as well to kind of just add a little bit of shadow, and I can kind of correct as well any little mistakes maybe to make it tidy up that little bit more. So you can see how we're kind of adding to this one bit at a time, one line at a time as we go around. And again, we're defining all those lines that may have been a little bit rushed in watercolour but now you can make sure they really pop. And again, remember, thicken some lines, so you have some thick and thin lines as well. So you can see how we're coming around to this one line at a time. Now it's your turn. You need to add black lines for definition, and one of our key words is definition. You've got to vary the thickness and thinness of the lines to suggest a shadow and show an element of contrast. Now, be slow and careful, don't rush. This is your finishing, final touch, so you don't want to rush it at this stage. Pause the video and complete your task. Now let's compare your work to Kandinsky's "Swinging." Now, you can see Kandinsky's work, you can also see my example, I want you to think to yourself, what elements are similar? They have similar shapes, maybe you've used bright colours too. Are your shapes defined and strong? Your work should be abstract as well. And you may have tone in your work, one of our key works where it goes from dark to light. You can see in the background of Kandinsky's work, he uses tone or he uses in a circle, it goes from a dark green to a light green around the edges. Lots of similar things I hope. Now, well done, that means you've created your first big art piece hopefully, and something you could even frame and put on a wall. Never underestimate how much when you pop something into a frame and display it, it can change it all together and make it look really, really fantastic. Now, do you remember how this connects to new media and sound art? That's right, sound art is of course being creating art with sound, and we've created art by using sound to inspire our work, so there's a slight difference. But new media is obviously this technological, new way of creating art. Inspiration can come from anything and anywhere, and sound and music is an art form unto itself. That's what's important, is that sound and music is part of art and can be used to create art. Now, you can see in front of you now there are three versions. One of them is just a cropped version of my work, but two of them are different. That's because I've digitised them and changed them and I've played with them on my computer. Now, there's lots of different ways that you can do this, lots of people talk about things like Photoshop and things like playing around with paint. You can do the same thing. So if you wanted to do a more new media element to finish your work, you can photograph your work and do something different with it on your PC or laptop. Or even on a phone, there's lots of apps that develop and change work too. Never feel like just because a painting is done, there's nothing more you can do with it. Now, with new media and new technology, you can actually try out all sorts of different things, so you can see that actually some of the things on the board, you might even think is better than my original piece. I particularly like the very black one with the very thin white lines. That might even be, I might even prefer that one to my original painting, and that's because of digital technology and using digital means to kind of change their work. So there's lots of different ways that you can do that, it will just be a case of looking a little bit and researching online for different ways to adapt and develop your work digitally. Those keywords again, tone is when you create different shades that are darker and lighter. Definition, which is what we did at the end of the lesson there using that black pen. It's when you use a material to ensure that a line is clear, strong and bold. And abstract art, you have created an abstract art piece, and it is art that is non-representational and might use colour, shape, line and pattern. And we were inspired by music and sounds for our work, but of course abstract art can be inspired by all sorts of things like emotion. How do you paint an emotion? Abstract art is a way to answer that question. I'd love to see the work that you've produced, do share your artwork with Oak National. I'd love to see the work and celebrate it myself. Well done for getting to the end of this unit, we've got two more lessons in this unit. So I do hope you stick around for the last two lessons.

Utilise your abstract shapes, inspired by sound, in a developed art piece

Utilise your abstract shapes, inspired by sound, in a developed art piece

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UnitArt and design / Digital / new media

Art and design