Year 5 & 6 Students at Sirius College investigate a range of traditional and contemporary art forms and styles, including Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo in creating these surreal Fruit Faces.

Unit: Fruit Faces 
Year Levels:  5 & 6
AusVELS level: 5 & 6
Duration of Unit: 3-4 Art lessons (double period)
Term: 2
Year: 2014

Learning Focus from AusVels Level 5 & 6:

At Level 5, students are working toward the Level 6 standards

They investigate a range of traditional and contemporary arts forms, styles, media, materials, equipment and technologies in Visual Arts – Art (two-dimensional and three-dimensional) individually and in combination.

They learn about ways to design, improvise, represent, interpret, make and present arts works that communicate feelings and their interests and understanding of themselves, their relationships and other people.

They experiment with imaginative and innovative ways of generating ideas and manipulating arts elements, principles and/or conventions to explore the potential of ideas, gaining inspiration from a broad range of sources, including arts works from different cultures, styles and historical contexts.

Students research, improvise, practise and rehearse skills, techniques and processes, using a range of media, materials, equipment and technologies

Though their Visual Diary they maintain a record of their planning and development.

Students learn to evaluate their own and other people’s arts works showing some understanding of selected arts forms and their particular techniques and processes as well as an emerging understanding of the qualities of arts elements, principles and/or conventions.

Through exploring and responding, students begin to develop a vocabulary of appropriate arts language they can use to describe and discuss the content and structural qualities of their own and other people’s arts works

Unit Learning Focus:

They experiment with imaginative and innovative ways of generating ideas and manipulating arts elements, principles and/or conventions to explore the potential of ideas, gaining inspiration from a broad range of sources, including arts works from different cultures, styles and historical contexts.

Students will gain inspiration from Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo and French Impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Students will explore with a variety of water paints and use said water colours to manipulate arts elements and principles.

Students will draw from observation and imagination.

With some guidance, they maintain a record of their planning and development (for example, in a visual diary or multimedia journal) noting when they are achieving their aim.

Students will use their Visual Diary to maintain a record of their planning and development.

Students will use their visual diaries and iPads to research, planning, and develop their final art work.

Students learn to evaluate their own and other people’s arts works showing some understanding of selected arts forms and their particular techniques and processes as well as an emerging understanding of the qualities of arts elements, principles and/or conventions.

At the end of the lesson students are given an opportunity to reflect and have a group discussion. They evaluate their own and other’s art works showing some understanding of drawing skills and painting techniques, through the use of water colour. They also get an opportunity to show their understanding on how art elements and principles were used.      

Through exploring and responding, students begin to develop a vocabulary of appropriate arts language they can use to describe and discuss the content and structural qualities of their own and other people’s arts works.

Students explore and respond to images of fruit through the use of art language. 

Unit Assessment Standards Level 6:

Creating and making

At Level 6, students independently and collaboratively experiment with and apply a range of skills, techniques and processes using a range of media, materials, equipment and technologies to plan, develop, refine, make and present arts works. They investigate a range of sources to generate ideas and manipulate arts elements, principles and/or conventions in a range of arts disciplines and forms as they explore the potential of ideas. In their arts works, they communicate ideas and understandings about themselves and others, incorporating influences from their own and other cultures and times. They evaluate the effectiveness of their arts works and make changes to realise intended aims.

They consider purpose and suitability when they plan and prepare arts works for presentation to a variety of audiences.

Students apply a range of skills and techniques through the use of scaling, proportion and mark making with the use of grey lead pencil and water colour paint brush.

Students explore and develop a range of ideas (2D mock-ups) in their Visual Diary; to reach the goal of achieving their final art work.  

Students manipulate arts elements and principles in combination to create the illusion of a Face made up of fruit.

Exploring and responding

At Level 6, students discuss traditional and contemporary arts works using appropriate arts language to describe the content, structure and expressive qualities of their own and other people’s works from a range of arts disciplines and forms. They interpret and compare key features of arts works made in a range of times, places and cultures. They identify and describe influences on their own works and discuss the purposes for which arts works are created in different historical and cultural contexts.

Students use appropriate arts language to describe and compare the art works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Students will look at how each artist displays portraiture and the medium in which they do it.

They compare these art works that have been created during a range of times and places.

They express how these art works have and have not influenced their own art work.

Teaching & Learning Activities

Week 1

Exploring & Responding

Explore the art works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Introduction through PowerPoint presentation

Look at portraiture

Difference between both artist

Students then divide their A3 page in their Visual Diary in two and attempt to develop a portrait.

Students are then given IPads and are given the opportunity to research various fruits.

They draw selected few on the other half of their visual diary

Use Arts Language while answering the following:

What do you notice?

Does fruit remind us of facial features, if so what?

Students look at their work and discuss the art works as a class.

Week 2

Creating & Making

Review the discussion from last week.

Students use their Visual Diary to create a mock up of what their portrait would look like if it had fruit features.

They then create their good copy on A3 Cartage paper … their goal is to utilise the whole page.  

Weeks 3-4

Creating & Making

Looked at the portraits before and after of the fruit features.

Students have a  open discussion about what they observe and  difference between the two portraits

They are then introduced to water colour

Students were required to use watercolour and 0.6 fine liners to complete their final art work.

Exploring & Responding

Students got to display and talk about their finish artwork

Open discussion on all the artwork displayed.

Resources and Materials

Visual Diary
A3 paper cartage paper
Water colour
Greylead pencil
Fine Liner 

Assessment Tools

Students were given a rubric to stick into their Visual Diary. We read it as a class so each student understood what they were being marked on.

Link with other domains

History – reading and researching various artists from the 15-18 hundreds and seeing how they went about creating their art work.

Maths (scaling) – in their Visual Diary students had to create mock –ups before developing their final art work. They had to see the smaller version in their Visual Diary and scale it up to cater for an A3 piece of paper.  

English- literacy and use of art language, use of visual language recorded in visual diaries

Cross Curricular Priorities

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

Students researched the various Fruits grown in Australia and looked at how many originated from Australia and how many were introduced from overseas. They then studied the shape and how best to use it in their art work. 

Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia

Student’s researched and explored fruits from different cultures. They looked at the different kinds of fruit Asia has introduced into Australia

Link with Personal, Social and Physical Domain

Interpersonal Development

Interaction with peers

Open class discussion  

Personal Learning

Through reflection they discuss learning strategies they have used and learnt as well as discussing ways they can improve or better manage their personal learning 

Link with Interdisciplinary Domain

Communication –

Students attempt to incorporate art language when expressing ideas and how the developed their art work.

Enquiry and Discussion in responding to the arts lessons.

Use of various books to inspire them and better inform them in their idea development.

ICT for Creating

Using IPads to research and develop ideas

PowerPoint presentation to introduce the topic and artists 

Using visual diaries to document idea development.