Tuesday 11 February 2014

Crowle Primary Pupils Become Aztec Warriors!

Crowle Primary are studying the intriguing and beguiling world of the Aztecs! This week Years three and four came to visit the centre to be inspired by architecture and unusual printing techniques.
 
We started the day with drawing challenges to draw something to do with Aztecs in 20 seconds! This got everyone's creative juices flowing and made us think quickly as little artists for the rest of the day.
 
We took a trip around the gallery spaces to find architectural features that looked to be inspired by Aztec patterns. We thought about geometric shapes and repetition and drew our findings on research sheets.
 
 
Inspired by the drawings, we drew repeated shapes onto a piece of faom that became a relief pad for printing a repeated pattern over and over onto a template of a head dress.
 


We had to draw as many large feathers onto one piece of paper as possible and used these feathers as a stencil for something called screen printing. The screens are made of wood and silk which is pulled tight over the wooden frame. The silk allows ink to be pushed through its tiny tiny holes. Our stencils would make sure that only the feather shapes would be printed, meaning we could make lots of them from one sheet of paper. The feathers were dried, cut and folded to make them more 3D.


Using the foam relief pads, we printed onto the main body of our head dress, using block printing ink which is really bold and colourful. The feathers were attached along with the head of a bird (even though some people thought it was a frog). Aztecs were greatly inspired by nature and things around them. Birds were seen as gods and bird imagery was often used for warrior head dresses, which is why we used them to inspire our work today.


Once all the inks and glue were dry, the head resses could be assembled for us to wear on the bus home. We looked really colourful and bright walking across Church Square.


If you or your school are interested in the team at 20-21 building a bespoke workshop around your class topic, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us: 01724 297070 or email education.2021@northlincs.gov.uk