Over the course of the Spring term, we have been learning about the work of abstract artist Peter Thorpe whose most popular work was inspired by space, which linked beautifully with our topic, the Earth and Space.
Starting with the background, we experimented with a variety of paint techniques that we could see in Peter’s work, like splattering, flicking and blowing paint, creating different sized brush strokes and using stippling and sponging. The planets were created using oil pastels. We had to use colour, tone and different marks to make them look 3D. We learned how to use a vector drawing programme in computing and used this to layer shapes to create the rockets. Finally we put it all together to create our mixed-media abstract pieces. They look amazing in the corridor!
We have also created some amazing astronaut line drawings using pen and ink with a wash. These look great on our splatter backgrounds that we made using watercolour paint. We used the same background to create the solar system, using oil pastels to draw the planets.