Hi Everyone! This week in Art the KS2 class bubble had a go at a few different activities. Firstly we had a look at some Illuminated Letters, we explored their history, their popularity in Medieval times and then had a look at them in the 17th Century, around the time of 1666. This week we continued work following the theme of The Great Fire of London.

Here is a small power point you can look at to learn about the history of Illuminated letters. Ignore the instructions on p13, but do have a look at the examples that follow afterwards:

https://www.wccusd.net/cms/lib/CA01001466/Centricity/Domain/412/Illuminations1.pdf

Here are some more examples on a YouTube video, I preferred to watch with the sound off! There are lots of different illuminated letters to look at in this video, take particular notice of the patterns, colours and shapes and how they work with the letter they are decorating and illuminating, notice how the decoration follows the letter contours and uses the spaces around them to either fill or highlight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igg2NJtFWq0

This week you can have a go at creating a Fire of London themed illuminated letter. Here are some of the class’s examples near to completion:

For the alphabet we will be sticking to the first letters of each word in the title: ‘The Great Fire Of London’ We can then use your illuminated letters for display headings and for your topic book titles/sketchbooks and so on! On the next page, you can also see some of the class’s finished pieces of work:

For a quick warm up, I’ve included a grid sheet of rectangles so you can have a practice of creating illuminated letter patterns in each box. You can do this in pencil or pen or even in a mixture of both. Here are some of the class’s worksheets they completed, which you can look at on the next page:

KS2 Class bubble illuminated letter practice sheets.

On the following pages are firstly the blank worksheet for this task (p4) should you wish to print it out to fill, children in class filled in around 9 boxes before moving on to their letter design, but see how you get on, you may wish to fill more. If you can’t print it out, feel free to draw out your own grid with a ruler or even just have a little practice on a spare piece of paper. It would be good to title and date it on the top line with ‘ Illuminated Letter Pattern Practice.’ -so it can go in your sketchbook at a later date. After that, there is a page of pattern examples for you to refer to and then a page of 17th Century illuminated letters and pattern designs for some further inspiration.

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17 th Century pattern and letter examples:

So now, let’s get started with the illuminated letters! At the end of this document (P11-15) are some templates for the letters T G F O and L, pick which letter you would like to work on. If you like, you can print off that letter template from this document and work on that, otherwise you can have a go at looking at it on screen and drawing it in pencil lightly on a piece of portrait positioned A4 paper, along with the border around it. If you do draw it, try hard to also copy the size.

Next start to draw patterns and themed illustrations to do with the fire onto and around your letter, perhaps use flames and the timber framed houses for example. On the next page I have included some pictures and border examples for your further reference, you can use ideas from these to decorate your letter. Think of some of the letters you have already seen earlier and use relevant ideas from ones that you like. Below are the stages of how your work will develop:

Starting from the left, draw in black pen (gel, biro or fine felt tip) and complete all the decorations and features you wish your letter to have. Next, colour in with pencil crayon. After this use felt tips, metallic pens or similar to add interest and pick out features that you would like to stand out and be illuminated! Next you can cut out around the border and stick it on to another piece of coloured paper (we chose hot fire colours: red/orange/yellow etc) Then cut it out again, leaving a thin border of coloured paper all the way round, it is now ready to stick on to another piece of paper-should you have any metallic or shiny paper to hand. If you don’t have any you could try using tin foil. You may prefer to get to the 3rd stage where it is coloured and highlighted and then photograph it and email it to us and I can print it out and stick it onto a coloured piece of paper and then a metallic piece of paper for you at school. Below, you can see another example of the different stages:

The other activity we’ve completed over the last 2 weeks in class are different types of marbling using hot colours, the children have been busy marbling paper with fire patterns, I was going to include those tasks in this lesson but I think I will save it for next week as otherwise you’ll have too much to do! However, here on the next page is a little sneek peek of some shaving foam marbling the children made at school:

You may have a set of your own marbling inks at home, perhaps you can for next week try to have some shaving foam (or otherwise some vegetable or cooking oil instead.) Also some cheap liquid bottles of food colouring in appropriate fire and smoke colours as mentioned last week.

Below for an extension, I will also include a grid worksheet (P16) for making your own illuminated letter designs (should you wish) in smaller versions and for any letters that you like, along with some more illuminated letter alphabet examples for you to look at here below, the different fonts are quite useful:

Have a great week, well done with all your hard work at home so far!! Please remember to keep all of your work to bring into school at a later date and good luck for this week- Mrs Taylor (Below, frame and fire of London examples, extension grid worksheet and illuminated letter starter templates:)

Border examples:

Fire of London/Tudor architecture illustrations:

My Illuminated Letter Designs. Date…………………………………………………………