Years 1-6 Visual Art From 2D to 3D – the journey of exploration deepens!
Last week, we explored pattern. After creating a spirit creature, many students found it difficult to create a repeating pattern on the ‘skin’ of their creature. So, this week, we explored how to create a repeating pattern and how to build on a motif to create a complex pattern. We asked, what is a pattern? A pattern is a design where lines, shapes or colours are repeated. This week we are going to learn how to build a regular pattern from shapes. In regular patterns the shape or design is repeated over and over in the same way. One way of creating a pattern is to draw a row of shapes and add onto this in a series of steps. So, if you draw a row of dots, in the next row you will draw this row of dots again and then add a shape to them. In the next row, add another shape onto the last two shapes. Students used this method of building repeating patterns and then then use coloured pencils to carefully colour them in. Their explorations were wonderful!
This week we are explored how to build an irregular pattern. In regular patterns the shape or design is repeated over and over in the same way. In irregular patterns the shapes or designs can be different and can be put anywhere on the page. There is no obvious order to the way a motif or design is used. We used Yayoi Kusama’s paintings as an example of an irregular pattern.
Yayoi Kusama enjoyed playing around with dots. She used them in many ways to create a pattern! The example below is interesting because she uses a few different motifs or designs in different ways to create a pattern. You can see it is a pattern as the parts or motifs are reused, but in new ways.
This is a more challenging way to create a pattern, but also a very free way! Firstly, we drew a shape or simple design of a shape that was easy to repeat, like dots. We used Yayoi Kusama’s picture to help us. We then drew a simple picture of something like Yayoi Kusama’s leaves. Then we drew another motif, like Yayoi Kusama’s shapes with dots attached to flowers. To make our irregular pattern, we brought all these ideas and designs together in one drawing and then used coloured pencils to colour in the pattern!
