Lesson video

Welcome back, artists, for another lesson on painting.

Last lesson, we were learning all about mixing colours.

We had a go at mixing the three primary colours.

I'm going to say two of those primary colours now, and I want to see if you can remember the third one.

Are you ready? It was red and yellow.

And the third one was, can you say it now? Did you say blue? Give me a big thumbs-up if you got that correct.

We also investigated what the secondary colours were by mixing a combination of the primary colours.

Let's see if you can remember what those were.

When we mixed red and blue, what colour did that make? Purple, well done.

When we mixed yellow and red, can you remember what colour that makes? Orange, fantastic.

And, lastly, when we mixed blue and yellow, what colour did we create? Green.

Give yourselves a big pat on the back if you remember those three secondary colours.

The title of today's art lesson is called "A Modern Day Cave Painting." And, actually, this lesson and next lesson are both really exciting because we're going to be working on a much larger piece of artwork.

We're going to be working towards creating the piece of art behind me, which is a modern day cave painting.

You might remember doing cave paintings in lesson one, but this is going to be very different because we're working towards creating a cave painting that is really realistic and is super unique to where you live and the modern day world that we live in today.

It's going to be unique to you.

Later on in the lesson, we'll have a closer look at the one behind.

Today you're going to need a larger piece of paper.

If you don't have a larger piece of paper, you could always ask a parent or carer to Sellotape two pieces of A4 paper together.

It'd be really great if this paper was thicker, maybe card or craft paper.

But if not, it doesn't matter.

If you have watercolour paints at home, you could be using those today too, but you're only really going to need a tea bag and apron or your painting shirt, and, as always, a table cover or newspaper to cover the surface you're working on.

Press pause now if you need to go check that you have these things, and press play when you're ready to carry on.

We're going to start our lesson by looking at our.

Can you remember what these are? Yes, our star words.

Then we're going to remind ourselves of what the prehistoric cave paintings looked like, because it's been a little while since lesson one, so we need a little bit of a reminder.

Then you're going to be working towards making a realistic textured cave wall out of your paper.

And finally, we'll come back here to think about what things you will include in your cave painting next lesson.

All right, it's time for our star words.

Well done.

Now remember, sitting up straight, I'm going to say the word first, and I want you to repeat it back to me.

Are you ready? Great.

Cave.

cave.

Wolves.

Wolves.

Texture.

Texture.

Blotch.

Blotch.

Dab.

Dab.

And last one, scrunch.

Scrunch.

So like I said, we're going to start off our lesson today, reminding ourselves of what the cave paintings look like.

So, I wonder if you can name one thing that were painted on the cave walls.

You just need to name one thing.

Can you tell me something in three, two, one? Well done if you said anything like paintings of animals, symbols, or hand prints, and an extra well done if you even said one of the names of the animals that were often painted.

Can you remember what I said we're mainly going to do in today's lesson? I said we're going to be concentrating on making our cave wall background today.

So it's important that we know a little bit more about the walls behind the painting.

Now, lots of the famous cave paintings from around the world were mostly made up of a rock called limestone.

Shall we say that we're together? Limestone.

And one more time.

Limestone.

Now, limestone was often a rock that was usually earthy colours.

So things like red, browns, greys, and yellows.

So those are the types of colours we want to put on our cave wall today.

The cave walls also had a lot of texture, and texture means the way something.

Well done if you said feels, because we've actually heard that word texture a lot this unit.

So good for you if you remember that texture is the way something feels.

So the cave painting walls were full of texture.

Let's have a quick recap question to see if you have been listening so far.

What type of rock were lots of the cave walls made from? Was it limestone or was it sandstone? Can you point now to answer that you think is correct.

And I'm going to show you the answer in three, two, one.

Did you point to limestone? Give me a big thumbs up if you did.

Fantastic job.

So the next question for both of us is, how can we make our paper, our plain white paper look more like cave walls? We're going to do that by adding some texture.

Let's say it together, texture.

One more time, texture.

I wonder what the cave walls were like to touch.

What was their texture like.

I'm going to ask you to close your eyes just for a moment and picture being deep inside a cave.

You're touching the walls of the cave.

Do they feel fluffy? Do they feel smooth? Do they feel bubbly? I think they would feel a little bit rough, and maybe bumpy, also possibly a little bit sharp, because the walls are made from a rock, so there might be lots of sharp edges.

So how are we going to recreate the texture of a cave wall? Well, what I'd like you to do is you're going to get your large piece of paper, and you might have stuck two pieces of paper together now, or maybe you've already got some really large paper at home.

And your first step is to scrunch your paper into a ball.

Once you've done that, I'm going to ask you to carefully open your paper back out, and flatten it with your hands.

Pause now to complete this part of the activity, and press play when you're ready to see what's next.

So how else can we make our paper look more cave like.

Well, at the minute, your paper or cave wall should look a little bit like this.

So we can see it's got some bumpy bits.

It's starting to have some sharp edges, and it's looking a little bit more rough.

But we know that our cave walls aren't supposed to be completely white like this.

They were lots of earthy colours.

Can you remember what colours they were? Reds, greys, yellows.

So we need to try and recreate a wall with those earthy colours.

Let's see how we're going to do it.

To add colour to our cave walls, we're going to be using some hot chocolate, tea bags, and coffee granules.

We can also try using the earthy colours of our watercolour palette if you have this at home.

So, using these materials, we're going to try and create a really realistic cave wall coloured background, like the one pictured here.

And we're going to do that by blotching and dabbing the colour on.

So we're not going to be creating any paint strokes with your paintbrush today.

I don't want to see anybody going backwards and forwards, up and down.

We are going to be blotching, and blotching is a bit like this, dabbing.

Can we blotch and dab together? Fantastic.

Let me show you a video of how it's done.

To colour your cave wall, you're going to need to soak a tea bag in some lukewarm water.

You can also do this with coffee, hot chocolate, and fruity teas if you have some.

Once you have scrunched your large piece of paper and flattened it back out, you simply strain some of the excess water from your tea bag and begin to blotch and dab the colour onto your paper.

The reason you must blotch and dab, instead of scraping your tea bag is so we can try to make our cave wall look as realistic as possible.

Remember that tea bags are very fragile.

This means they can tear and break easily if you are too rough with them, so be gentle.

Get experimenting with the earthy colours you can create by dunking your tea bag into the hot chocolate and coffee too.

The aim is to get rid of as much white space as possible, so make sure you've got that nice paper or plastic cover behind your paper, so you can paint right up to the edges.

Once you have covered most of the paper and can barely see any more white, you could use a paintbrush to add some more earthy colours from your watercolour palette.

Colours like yellow, red, oranges, and browns will help to bring your cave wall to life.

Remember to dab and blotch, avoid paint strokes.

Go back and watch over your cave wall with a tea bag one last time to make sure all your colours blend together nicely.

Use this time to cover any remaining bits of whites that you can see.

When you're happy with how your cave painting wall looks, find a safe space for it to dry until next lesson.

Pause the video now to complete your task, and press play when you're ready to carry on the lesson.

Can you give me a nod if you've finished your background for your cave painting? And I hope you found a nice, safe place for it to dry until we're ready for our next lesson, because you will need to keep it out of harm's way, so it stays nice and safe.

Now, can you give me a wave in the air if you tried using a tea bag for your painting today? And can you give me another wave if you had any hot chocolate, coffee granules, or maybe some fruity tea to try? And whether you used watercolour, tea bags, fruity tea, coffee granules, can you tell me now which was your favourite item to paint with? And why was that your favourite? So, what drawings will you include in your modern day cave painting? To inspire you, I'm going to give you an extra bonus challenge.

Your challenge is to take a walk in your local park or area later on this week, or maybe even today if you've got a chance, to find some inspiration for your cave paintings.

Take some pictures of animals, vehicles, symbols, or any other important parts of your local area.

Please remember, this is an activity that will require supervision from your parent or carer.

Here are some of the photos I took of animals when I went on a walk in my local area.

Shout out the names of the animals if you recognise them.

Here's some other things that I took photos of, that I thought are important to me and where I live.

I took this picture of cars and lorries because I live right beside a big motorway.

So this is something I see every single day.

I wanted to include this in my painting.

I also took a picture of this sign, which is a speed limit sign, and I see a lot of them in my local area.

You might have them too.

Lastly, I found these really cool stones in my local park of emojis.

And I thought I want to try and include these in my cave painting, because emojis are a big part of our everyday lives.

We use them when we're messaging our family and our friends.

Can you spot any of the animals that I took photos of in this cave painting? And can you point to where I have included a picture of an emoji? And can you even see one of my road signs? So to finish off our lesson, I want to ask you if you remember what things you're going to be looking out for when you go on a walk in your local area.

Can you tell me something now? Yes, you're going to be looking out for any animals that you see where you live, take some photos of them.

You're also going to be looking out for any vehicles that you see a lot of.

It might be trains, buses, or maybe tractors.

You could also look out for any symbols or signs.

And to recap on everything we have done in today's lesson, I want to ask you, what techniques did we use today? Let's think back to when we wanted to create our rocky, bumpy, and textured surface.

What did we do to our paper? Can you remember what action we did? We.

Well done if you said scrunch.

We scrunched our paper, didn't we? And how did we create that realistic earthy colour for our wall? We use tea bags, and we were.

What did I say that action was? We were blotching and dabbing.

Fantastic if you remembered that.

I hope you had a lot of fun today, I absolutely love getting stuck in, and making my modern day cave painting, and I cannot wait to see how yours turns out next lesson.

Don't forget to go on your walk in your local area and take photos of anything you would like to include in your painting next lesson.

You might want to even print these out or have them with you on your device, ready for next time.

See you then, bye bye.