Core Skills Analysis
Visual Arts
Rosalie took part in a process-art lesson and created an oil pastel landscape showing the Aurora Borealis in several shades of green. Rosalie layered the pastels and used blending stumps to blend colours, exploring how these techniques changed the appearance of the sky. Rosalie also used black oil pastel to add depth and dimension to the landscape. By making personal choices about colour and composition, Rosalie learned how artistic techniques could communicate a landscape in an individual way.
Science
While depicting the Aurora Borealis, Rosalie engaged with a natural phenomenon as the subject of an artwork. Rosalie represented the night sky using several green hues and contrasted them with black pastel to suggest depth and dimension. This offered a visual way to connect an observed sky phenomenon with choices about colour and contrast. Rosalie explored how an artist could use these visual features to communicate a sense of a night-sky landscape.
Practical Skills and Collaboration
Rosalie helped set up the tables and art supplies for the family-run workshop and offered suggestions during the lesson. These contributions gave Rosalie opportunities to take part in preparing a shared creative space and to contribute ideas as the activity unfolded. Rosalie then completed an artwork within the workshop’s open-ended process-art approach, making individual choices about how to interpret the subject. After the workshop, Rosalie also took part in the offered face painting.
Tips
Tips Extend Rosalie’s exploration by looking at photographs of auroras together and inviting Rosalie to notice the colours, shapes, and contrasts before making a second artwork in a different palette. Try a hands-on blending studio with oil pastels on different kinds of paper, comparing how layering and blending stumps affect the results. Make a simple night-sky landscape outdoors or from a window, then discuss which details could be shown with light and dark colours. To connect the creative process with communication, invite Rosalie to give the finished artwork a title and describe the choices that helped convey the scene.
Book Recommendations
- The Northern Lights: The True Story of the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis by Lucy Jago: An illustrated account of Kristian Birkeland and the scientific investigation of the Northern Lights, connecting the artwork’s subject to real-world science.
- Sky Color by Peter H. Reynolds: A picture book about looking closely at the sky and finding imaginative ways to represent it with colour.
- The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art by Barb Rosenstock: A lively introduction to Kandinsky and creative approaches to colour and artistic expression.
Try This Next
- Colour-layering worksheet: draw three small sky panels and test different green-and-black combinations in each.
- Quick quiz: How did layering, blending stumps, and black pastel help Rosalie create depth or communicate the landscape?
- Artwork writing prompt: Give the aurora landscape a title and write two sentences about the colour choices.
- Sky observation sketch: Look at an aurora photograph and draw the shapes and colours noticed before creating a new pastel interpretation.