Artist research - Beatriz Milhazes - Natural Forms - Flowers, Painting, acrylic paint and transfers

This set of three lessons introduces the work of Brazilian artist, Beatriz Milhazes and could be used as artist research for the project: Natural Forms. The practical activities in these lessons can easily be stretched across six lessons or even more depending on your student’s ability to refine and develop these techniques. Students are introduced to the artist via an interview created by the James Cohan Gallery and available on Youtube. Students then produce their first response drawing from one of Milhazes paintings, scaling up to fit their page. They then finish the lesson writing an analysis on one piece by the artist. The second lesson begins by creating a colour pallet for Milhazes piece using acrylic and then going on to use this pallet to paint their response from the previous lesson. The final lesson leads students to experiment with Milhazes transfer techniques. Students draw flower silhouettes onto a circle before transferring them onto plastic and painting them with acrylic. When this is dry it is painted with PVA glue and transferred to a canvas or sketchbook page. This process is modeled by Milhazes in the interview and is supported by a step by step visual instruction sheet.

Each lesson consists of: a starter; objectives; step by step instruction sheets with differentiated learning outcomes, and a plenary, as well as annotation sentence starters and key words. The three lessons also include opportunity for peer assessment and analysis with a printable analysis help sheet. At the end of the powerpoint there are step by step visual instructions and further printable resources. There is also a suggested homework slide where students complete further research into the artist in order to develop their artist page further.