Planning our paintings

We looked at a painting done by Glenda Randerson (Auckland) to discuss the story she was telling. Once the children understood what I was asking them, (by telling a story about another painting) they could tell the story of Glenda’s daughter (subject in the painting) and also identified the images that gave them the clues.

The next step was to get the children talking about what they liked to do and where.
I gave them A2 newsprint and we folded into quarters. On one section they drew themselves doing something they liked, on another, two special things and finally the scene they wanted their story to take place.

Following this process they cut the paper into the quarters, keeping the scene they cut the other images out. They placed them onto the scene to find the best position and glued them.

This became the planning for the painting. I realised the planning sketch was A4 size and that I was expecting the children to enlarge their image onto A2 size.
Alternative for next time, I would get them to draw on the full size first.

To overcome the problem I got the children to redraw their sketch onto A2 newsprint. I was pleasantly surprised to see they handled this well. Proceeding the redrawing they started to colour the images. The bonus of having the redraw was they become more familiar with the images and could make changes and improvements.

We painted the undercoat on the cardboard.