Key Stage 2 - Art

Years 3 to 6

Free art sessions for Key Stage 2 pupils enhance skills, knowledge and understanding of art by interacting with portraits through observation, discussion and hands-on art activities. We also provide free CPD for teachers

Pupils will gain more from their Gallery visit if it is integrated into a sequence of portraiture-based work in school, including pre and post-visit activities such as drawing portraits, working from a live model to gain confidence translating ideas to a two-dimensional surface.  

Sessions are free and all art materials are provided. Sessions can take place whenever the necessary rooms and staff are available.

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Getting the Message

Examine how a portrait by Reynolds, Gainsborough and their contemporaries can convey messages about the sitter through clothing, pose, composition and objects in the painting, and select one work to draw using pastels.

• 90 minutes
• One class, maximum 30 pupils
• Follow-up webquest: KS2 Art Portrait Prize

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Styles of Contemporary Painting

Through working in the style of a contemporary portrait of their choice, pupils will become aware of the wide range of different methods and techniques used by artists in the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They are also encouraged to express their preferences about different styles of portrait painting.

• 90 minutes
• One class, maximum 30 pupils
• Follow-up webquest: KS2 Art Painting in Style

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The Faces of Elizabeth I

Following a discussion about the Elizabethan idea of beauty, pupils draw Queen Elizabeth I using the Tudor method of copying portraits called ‘pouncing’, and complete their portrait in colour.

• Recommended for Years 5 and 6
• 90 minutes
• One class, maximum 30 pupils
• Follow-up webquest: KS2 Art Painting Elizabeth I