Visual Arts Planning: Our Natural World

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Explore our collection of Natural World themed resources.

With our planet under threat of climate change, it’s more important than ever that the younger generations learn about the delicate balance of our habitats. Here, we have collected some resources together that celebrate our natural world and all the animals in it.

Tell us what you are planning to cover or explore this term in your school or institution and we’ll recommend resources or learning approaches which we think might feed your teaching.

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Foil Collaged Icebergs by Frances Hatch

Animals and Wildlife

After School Art Club: Drawing, Collage, Painting and Sculpture. (Part 1)

Drawing spiral snails

Make individual sculptures of polar bears, which can be brought together as a communal artwork.

After School Art Club: Drawing, Collage, Painting and Sculpture. (Part 12

Drawing spiral snails

Create an icy installation in the school hall, to give children the opportunity to see all their polar bears in context.

Ice Worlds

Drawing spiral snails

A project that invites pupils to create an imaginative interpretation of what an ice world above and below the waterline might be like.

An Ecological Mural

Animal Habitat Mural

A collaborative project exploring animal habitat, taking the form of a large scale mural pasted onto boards and mounted on an empty brick wall within the school grounds.

Monoprint Animals

Exploring monoprinting

Artist-Educator Cathy Mills works with children in foster care to create simple monoprints, inspired by animals.

Anthropomorphic Animal Portraits

This painting activity looks at giving human characteristics to animals.

This painting activity looks at giving human characteristics to animals.

Exploring Casting with Animal Moulds

Using latex moulds

This resource shares the process of casting using latex moulds to primary-aged children. The final casts will then be used to explore the work of artist Henri Rousseau.

Making Long Legged Animals

Creating sculptural animals

Using the theme of long legged animals, this sculptural challenge shows how to construct with a variety of materials, including Modroc.

Drawing Cartoon animals

Drawing cartoon animals

Explore how to draw cartoon animals - enable children to build an understanding of their subject matter together with an awareness of how mark making can help portray personality and action.

Making Illustrated Letters

Painting illustrated letters

Illustrator Isobel Grant offers children and teenagers a fun activity focusing on illustrated letters.

Animal Masks

Making animal masks

This one hour session, the first in a series of three workshops, was about creating initial animal mask designs and generating animal mask ideas.

Spiral Snails

Drawing spiral snails

Tracy McGuinness Kelly demonstrates a project based on drawing spirals, which can relate to a mini-beast topic in school, or stand alone as a drawing workshop.

Animal Sculptures

Exploring themes around identity by creating collages and mixed media sculpture inspired by animals and their characteristics and habitats.

Exploring themes around identity by creating collages and mixed media sculpture inspired by animals and their characteristics and habitats.

Chimera drawings

Chimera drawings

Create your own beasts! With Artist Eleanor Somerset.

Newspaper Heads

Making animal heads from newspaper

Textile and graphic artist Sharon Gale shows how to make colourful, painted Newspaper Animal Heads.

Habitats, Meadows and Flowers

Animal Habitat Mural

An animal habitat mural

Vicki Ostersen showcases a project that explores animal habitat, taking the form of a large scale mural pasted onto boards and mounted on an empty brick wall within the school grounds.

A wildflower Meadow

Creating a collage wildflower meadow

Head of Art Rachel Burch explores simple drawing, collaging and painting techniques to create beautiful artworks inspired by a summer meadow.

Painting A Rainbow Forest

Painting a rainbow forest

A large scale, colourful forest painting by Primary School children.

Hedgerow Art

Painting inspired by hedgerows

Artist Educator Sara Dudman shares a beautifully illustrated resource in which she enables teenagers to work together to create hedgerow-inspired drawings and paintings.

working with and in the landscape

Creating art in the landscape

Artist Frances Hatch shares her magical processes for creating site specific art, inspired by a variety of environments including costal, woodland and urban environments and using materials found at the location.

Botanical Fairies

Collage using petals

Rachel Thompson demonstrates a simple collage activity using flowers from the garden to create a Fairy collage.

Walking and Drawing

Walking and drawing

Artist and AccessArt team member shares the process of making drawings whilst walking.

Volcano Paintings

Painting in the style of Frank Bowling

AccessArt contributor Kate Gorely shows how to use innovative ways to explore colour and texture in painting, inspired by the Artist Frank Bowling.

Explore and Draw

Drawing outside

This innovative drawing and nature project for children ages 7 -13 yrs, took place at the Museum in the Park, Stratford Park, Stroud, over five Saturday's.

Which Artists: Faith Bebbington

Faith Bebbington plastic waste sculptures

Artist Faith Bebbington talks us through the process of her sculptural work, using waste plastic to create beautiful large scale animal and figurative forms.

Monoprint Farmyard

Monoprinting farm yard animals

This workshop gave students the chance to experiment with a variety of different processes to create rich, textured surfaces.

A Bluebell Forest

Painting a bluebell forest

In this project young teenagers were given the opportunity to paint on a larger scale and immerse themselves in colour. We were all inspired by the spring!

Primal Painting

Creating pigments and dyes from nature

In this resource Marijke Liefting and Iris Verbakel, share a workshop session in which children explore a kitchen garden as a source for natural pigments.

Painting the Savannah

Painting inspired by the African Savannah

Artist Chloe Williams introduces children attending a workshop, to colour and printmaking on an ambitious and energetic scale.

Stones, Fossils and Shells

Nature Kaleidoscope

Making a kaleidoscope using natural materials

In this post, Artist and Creative Practitioner Helen Walsh shows how to make a colourful kaleidoscope using natural and found materials.

Drawing on Pebbles

Drawing on pebbles

Inspired by a collection of small pieces of flint, slate, brick and wood collected on a walk, this post shows how to make them into 'fossils'.

Dressing up as Fossils

Painting fossils

Filling a canvas with fossil patterns before hiding underneath them to become fossils!

Observation and Imagination: Shells

Drawing shells

An activity that introduces both observational and imaginative drawing when looking at sea shells and pebbles.

Making Shells

Constructing shells

In this post shells make an excellent theme to inspire building with stuff and exploring how materials might work together to create form, structure and texture.

Drawing shells big!

Drawing shells on a large scale

Drawing shells on a large scale was the theme of a workshop for teenagers that introduced basic steps to creating form and tonal shading in drawings.

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