Drawing with Paint

In Year 4 we have been looking at an artist's use of light and have been learning about a new word, chiaroscuro. This is where the artist uses a strong contrast between light and dark. We have been looking at ‘Supper at Emmaus’ by Caravaggio and 'The Milkmaid' by Vermeer, which both use extreme tone and have created very atmospheric paintings. Over the past few weeks the children have been creating observational drawings of fruits and vegetables, we have used scrunched up 'chiaroscuro' faces to see the darkest of dark areas and the lightest of light areas. We have also worked in natural light to help us to see the caste shadow more clearly. This week it was time to use their skill of observation and use of tone to paint a potato crisp. The crisp had many different shades and provided an exciting object to paint. They had a varied selection of acrylic paints to use including yellow, brown, blue, red and white. The children had to look very carefully at the crisp and mix the colours that they could see. I am sure that you will be as impressed as I was, when greeted by so many confident painters at the end of the session, when their crisp looked so much like a crisp! Enjoy, Year 4 you were amazing!