An Introduction to Digital Art

About this unit:

Introduce children to a range of digital art packages and the tools within them. They apply the tools and their skills to a range of artistic styles and genres from painting to photography.

As art is such a flexible and diverse subject, you may well want to adapt these lessons to link to your topic work or focus on a particular artist or style of art. The artists, styles and tools  mentioned are just examples to give you ideas. 

National Curriculum Links - Computing KS1

The content of this plan cover the following National Curriculum strands: 

  • use technology purposefully to create, organise, store, manipulate and retrieve digital content
  • recognise common uses of information technology beyond school

 

Curriculum Mapping

Why this? What does it build on?

This unit gives students the chance to explore a range of key digital art design skills and tools. It should build on experimentation with drawing simple pictures in Early Years, both on paper and using digital devices. It supports the development of mouse skills, which will be a vital key skill for their future learning.

What comes next?

Our scheme of work contains a wide range of units that cover different ways of creating and editing multimedia digital artifacts. Students revisit a focus on digital art and design skills to a much deeper level in our Key Stage 2 units; Digital Imagery: Patterns in nature, 3D Design and Manipulating images.

They will also be able to revisit and apply many of the skills learned in this unit to our Year 2 units Writing in different styles and An introduction to animation, and then other multimedia units in KS2 with Manipulating Sound and Creating Instructional videos. Some of our coding units also make use of digital art and design skills as children design elements of objects or backgrounds in their projects.

View our full curriculum map

Take a look at our full curriculum map to see how units across all year groups, from Year 1 to Year 6 link.

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Unit Resources

Lesson Slides

Detailed lesson slides for you to use when delivering this unit of work with your class

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Unit Assessment Sheet

Use our simple assessment system to measure your students' success in this unit of work.

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Lessons

Lesson 1

  • Look at the differences between a computer art and paper based art
  • Use different tools to create a simple picture

Simple tools

Lesson 2

  • Understand there are a variety of tools in a paint package, each for a different purpose.
  • Talk about your use of a graphics package and your choices of tools.
  • Compare two similar paint packages.

 

Symmetrical art

Lesson 3

  • Use shape, line and colour to create a artistic style called Impressionism.
  • Use different tools in a digital paint package for good effect.
  • Talk about your use of a graphics package and your choices of tools.

Impressionism

Lesson 4

  • Use shape, line and colour to create a artistic style called Pointillism.
  • Use different tools in a digital paint package for good effect.
  • Talk about your use of a graphics package and your choices of tools.

Pointillism

Lesson 5

  • Use shape, line and colour to create a artistic style called modern art.
  • Use different tools in a digital paint package for good effect.
  • Talk about your use of a graphics package and your choices of tools.

Modern Art

Lesson 6

  • Use shape, line and colour to create a artistic style called street art.
  • Use different tools in a digital paint package for good effect.
  • Talk about your use of a graphics package and your choices of tools.

Street art

Suggested Software

Full Computing Glossary

Take a look at our full computing glossary, plus key vocabulary for each age group.

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Key computing vocabulary for this unit

Alter - to change the way something looks, sometimes using a computer or other digital tools

Edit - To change, add or remove elements in a piece of work (usually to improve it)

Evaluation - Making judgements (a computational thinking concept)

Flood fill - a graphic drawing tool that colours a contained area with colour with a single click, usually represented by a tin of paint tipping over.

Multimedia - Content that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, video and interactive content.

Online - using a digital device to visit a website or app that makes use of the internet.

Save - To store a piece of work in a computer’s memory so that it can be recalled at a later time. 

Software – computer programs, including both application software (such as office programs, web browsers, media editors and games) and the computer operating system. The term also applies to ‘apps’ running on mobile devices and to web-based services.

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