THE CORBIE part II

"THE CORBIE"  part II

The Corbie, such a good poem and such a great subject.  I love crow images, so full of life and movement.  The children appreciate the sinister qualities that the bird represents.  It's also a great way to learn the words of the poem.

I like to use words in a piece of artwork, and sometimes do so in my own work.  I think that is a natural thing for a child, they use a mixture of words and images to express themselves from an early age, and are used to books having complementary illustrations along side stories.  In this case we used the words of "The Corbie" poem and sounds that the crows made as a background and texture for the drawing of the bird.

We used thick and thin black felt tipped pens  for the written work. (Berol are the best)  The children are allowed to ignore all the rules of writing.  You can imagine how well that goes down with the pupils, and unpopular with their class teacher I become!  By ignoring spacing, the rules of capital letters and even spelling to the children are able to keep the words flowing and create texture and pattern. The contrast between thick  and thin lines and large and small words start to create a  sense of distance too. 

The qualities of the felt pens allow the children to create shadowy trees, by painting wet tree shapes the ink from the pens and the water blend together to make spooky grey silhouettes.  (one to remember for Halloween)   

The class then created a crow shaped stencil (tricky cutting) and using soft drawing pencils the scribbled through the opening.  It is important that the pupils do not outline the shape of the crow but let the ends of the pencil texture define the edge of the shape.  Encourage the pupils to make the pencil lines follow the directions of the feathers.

We also added yellow beaks and beady eyes to create a vocal point.