We’re always looking for inspiration for cross-curricular learning and we’d like to share our five of our favourite artworks/artists that lend themselves brilliantly to this.

1) William Hogarth’s painting ‘Scenes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest’ provides a great starting point for discussion around how the characters might be lifted from page to stage. Did your pupils imagine the characters to look like this?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/William_Hogarth_017.jpg

 

2) Natalie MacIntyre creates beautiful and detailed insect drawings, perfect for enhancing the topic of Minibeasts! Rather than observational drawings of entire insects, can pupils focus on just one feature - the eyes or wings, for example?

https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2016/04/27/natalie-mcintyre/

 

3) Piet Mondrain offers lots of exciting opportunities for mathematical challenges. Can teams of pupils create scaled-up versions of his paintings in the playground?

https://www.piet-mondrian.org/composition-with-red-yellow-and-blue.jsp

4) The work of Leonardo Da Vinci is a great way to explore the relationship between Art and Science, particularly by comparing the observational skills required for both. How did Da Vinci’s scientific knowledge inform his paintings?

https://medium.com/s/leonardo-da-vinci/the-nature-of-the-human-body-e7b27b494051

 

5) The paintings of synesthete Melissa McCracken, are brilliant examples of work painted in response to listening to a specific piece of music. Put on your favourite track and see what the pupils come up with…!

https://mymodernmet.com/melissa-mccracken-synethesia-paintings/