Introduction

The final lesson in this unit continues to look at modern art, in the form of street art. This can take many different forms but is usually defined as art that is created in public spaces. It is often created with paint or spray paints, but doesn't have to be. Stickers, chalks, fabrics, flags, sculpture, twine and many other mediums can used to create street art. You can even consider music and drama by street performers to be a form of street art.

It's worth also discussing graffiti at this point - ask the class do you think graffiti and street art are the same thing? 

 

 

There are different opinions to this question, and the two certainly overlap, but graffiti is often used to describe unwanted, illegal spray painting that is destructive, or vandalism. Street art isn't always legal either, but is often planned and done with consent, and usually designed to inspire or convey a message to people that see it.

There are lots of examples of street art all around the world. Here's just a few (all courtesy of pexels.com):

 

 

Possibly the most famous street artist today is the artist known as Banksy. His identity is unknown but his art is often in public places and uses spray paints and stencils, and conveys political and social messages about what is happening in the world. Some of his work has been sold for millions of pounds, and he set up a stunt so that one of his works actually shredded itself just after it sold at auction for £1 million!

Lots of people would love to know who he really is, but you can find out a bit more about Banksy and his work HERE.

 

 

Other types of street art

Have a look at this video from Tate Kids, where we meet Camille Walala. She is inspired by patterns from different cultures and nature.

 

 

Street art tasks

Below are two options that can give you and your students a chance to create some digital street art inspired by the two artist examples above.

Take Kids have a Street Art tool that combines a brick wall background, roller and spray can effects, stickers and stampers. Each 'brush' has three size options and there's a small range of bright colours to use.

Find it at www.tate.org.uk/kids/games-quizzes/street-art, or search 'Tate street art' in your search engine.

 

 

Secondly, inspired by Camille Walala's work with repeating shapes and patterns, 2Paint a Picture has a tool called eCollage.

 

 

Here you can build up a collage by creating a stamper in the smaller box in the upper left of the screen.

 

 

Here, we've started with a simple dotty pattern using two colours. You can then use the two sliders below the box to adjust the size of the stamper and the brightness of the colours.  This could be used as a background.

 

 

Then use the eraser (make it large with the size slider in the bottom left to speed things up), to clear the pattern and create a new stamp. In this example we've gone for wobbly black and white stripes to stand out on the background.  We've used two different sizes of the stamp on top of the background pattern.

 

 

Continue this process adding other shapes or patterns until you are happy with your creation.

 

 

Useful features are the Undo and Redo buttons at the top of the screen, and if you hold down the mouse button as you click to stamp you can rotate the stamper by moving the mouse around.

We've added some screen shots to the lesson slides from the video of Camille working with the children, to give the students some ideas and examples of the sorts of shapes and patterns she likes to work with. But they are free to try out their own ideas too.

 

Plenary

Finish by reviewing the students' creations, What were you trying to create? Why did you choose the tools you used? Could it have been improved in any way? What has been your favourite art task over the weeks and why?