This week has been all about our art project ‘Street View’. As part of this project we have been learning about a famous American Pop artist called James Rizzi. His street themed art focuses on brightly coloured smiling skyscrapers which are created by layering images onto paper and corrugated card.

After learning about his work we were well and truly inspired. We couldn’t wait to get started on some Street View art of our own…

To begin, we went for a walk around our local area and took photos of the buildings and different features that we could see. Back at school we then made these into collages using ‘Picollage’ on the ipads. We picked some of the features that we really liked and drew these as thumbnails ready to look back at later in the week.  It was interesting to see how our local area compared to the city skylines in James Rizzi’s street view art.

Next we compared famous ‘street view’ artwork from a range of different artists including James Rizzi and Vincent van Gogh. We looked at similarities and differences using vocabulary such as – subject matter, colour, line, shape and form and started to share and record some of our thoughts and ideas.

After that we chose our favourite James Rizzi piece to recreate. We started off using thick black pen to draw the outlines, taking particular care with the windows as we noticed that the window style is a key feature in James Rizzi’s art. We then chose how we were going to add the bright colour. Some of us used felt tip pens, some used crayons and others used pastels. We talked about the importance of art being individual – it is OK that yours is different to your friends. This is good!!

Finally we learnt about working collaboratively. We practised the layering technique used by James Rizzi, following some instructions on how to make a house. First we cut out the features, then we stuck them onto corrugated card. This was an important step, as it meant that we knew how we were going to create our own Street View mural. So… bringing together some of the features that we photographed on Monday, the faces and colours that James Rizzi uses in his art and the layering technique that we had practised we were finally ready.

Below you can see the process from the beginning to the end… WOW!!

What a brilliant way to end the half term, working collaboratively! Well done year 1.