Our first artist study of 2025 is the infamous Frida Kahlo!
To begin our learning, we found out a little bit more about who she was. We learned that she was born in Mexico in 1907 and began painting after a bus accident in 1925 that left her seriously injured. She was a self-taught artist and in her work, she often referenced her Mexican heritage and she merged her love of nature and portraits to make captivating and strange, yet beautiful, paintings.
To understand her artwork further, we studied 3 self-portraits (Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair and Self-Portrait with Monkey). We considered why she made these images and what she wanted to capture. As a challenge, we had to decide which of these were our favourites and explain why. We noticed that nature was a theme within two of the portraits and she was often expressionless.
Our task was to create our own self-portraits inspired by Frida Kahlo’s work. To ensure that we felt prepared, we watched a video that explained how to draw self-portraits. We used mirrors to look at our reflections to ensure we were as accurate as possible! We aimed to include a range of plants in the background and as a challenge, tried to include a jungle animal. This ties in nicely to our new Geography topic of North and South America as we will be learning about the Amazon Rainforest (as well as other biomes). Some of us were able to add sloths, toucans and monkeys to the foreground of our work.
This week, we painted our sketches. Our objectives when painting were to include texture through paint mix. To do this, we added some sand to our paint which gives a slight 3D effect to our work. Some of us even used bristles from paint brushes too. We also had to combine colours and create tints, tones and shades. Using a range of shades in our backgrounds helped to define the foliage even better.
We hope that you love our artwork!
Year 5, how do you think you could improve your work even further?
