Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to the third of the collage lessons for year four.

Obviously, if you're in a different year group, you can still do this, our activity.

Don't feel like it's limited to just year four, but of course it's perfectly made for you if you are in year four.

This lesson is all about drawing, and drawing multiple cake ideas using fine-line colour pens or pencil.

So if you don't have collage materials, that's okay for this lesson.

You can just enjoy creating lots of different ideas, which we're going to go through, and different ways of creating different ideas, and experimenting with drawing in this lesson.

It's a lot of fun.

This is my favourite type of art, so I think you're going to really enjoy it.

Okay, so for the third lesson in this unit, the focus is and the learning objective is, again, draw multiple cake ideas using fine-line colour pens or pencil.

So again, we're kind of just temporarily parking a little bit of knowledge on collage, so that we can prepare some ideas for what we're going to use later for a much more bigger collage art piece.

So it's all really about drawing today, so again, get those pencils sharpened and make sure you're ready for that.

The resources you're going to need.

The equipment for the lesson is your sketchbook.

Of course, every single thing you've done so far, all of that goes into your sketchbook.

So you can keep that record of experimenting with collage, experimenting with cupcakes and collage, and now, experimented with drawings of cakes, which is going to be the main spine of today's lesson.

You need a pencil, so make sure it's nice and sharp.

Maybe have a sharpener and a rubber at the ready.

And for those who want to push themselves out a little bit further, keep some fine-line pens, again, some colour fine-line pens at this side is going to really make your work pop in the final part of this lesson.

But of course, if you just have a pencil and paper, that's kind of all you need for today's lesson and you will be able to still create and reach that learning objective in today's lesson with those materials.

In today's lesson, we are going to use a sketchbook to record our learning.

As we always do.

We're going to look at examples of cake drawings.

Again, be under no illusion.

There are plenty of artists who look at cakes, and pastries, and cupcakes, and all those lovely things that we like to eat, there's plenty of artists who look at that for their artist's kind of focus.

And we're going to explore key features of cupcakes and cakes in general in terms of drawing them.

And then we're going to create at least 20 different quick idea drawings of cakes.

So do make sure you're ready for that, lots to do.

The keywords today are as follows.

They are line-drawing.

You're not going to need to worry about shadow, and tone, and filling things in today.

These are going to be carefully drawn line-drawings, okay? So it's an image that only uses line.

Patterns, a repeated design or shape.

We're going to use a lot of patterns.

And again, these aren't going to be filled-in patterns.

These are going to be intricately drawn line-patterns.

And experiment.

Okay, we're going to be capturing a selection of ideas.

We're experimenting with lots of different ideas.

These art pieces are hopefully going to be fun.

You are going to enjoy them, but I'm not sure if you're going to want to necessarily keep them or frame them.

Again, they're just ideas to get your brain thinking of different things for the next lessons in the future.

I want you to look at these drawings.

This is by an artist called Helen Hancocks.

And she is somebody who has looked at lots of different things.

She's quite popular with certain illustrations about cats and clothes.

But these are some of the worksheets that she produced only this year in 2020, where she actually had some different cakes and designs which she did herself.

I want you to think about these three pictures.

What do these three pictures have in common? If you were to reduce them down into three different things, what would they be? That's a tricky question.

You can't say they all taste the same, who knows? One might be a jelly cake.

One might be a chocolate cake.

Visually, what do they all have in common? What do all three of them have? Now, you can see they all have stands.

All the cakes sit on a kind of decorative stand.

They all have patterns on the cakes themselves.

And they all have interesting toppings on the top.

So I want you to think about those three things.

The stand, the cake itself, where the patterns are, and then the topping.

those three things are going to be a rule that we're going to kind of stick to when we create our own designs.

The stand, the cake, and then of course, the topping as well.

Presentation, as usual, you will need your sketchbook and your pencil to begin with.

Each cake must have a topping, the cake itself, and the stand that it sits upon.

Have a look at these examples.

You can see different ideas for toppings, whether they're going to be look cream bits or whether they're going to be cherries and wafers, whether they're going to be a candle.

The cake itself, is it going to be one big solid cake or is it going to be a five-tier cake? And what stand are you going to have? Again, often the stands have that kind of strong centre there holding it up.

Is it going to have a kind of free decoration? It's up to you what these are, but you have to be quick, and you have to be creative to do this.

Each drawing, as I said, will be about one minute per drawing.

So again, there's a lot of drawings we're doing here, but we want to constantly create different ideas, knowing that they won't all be perfect.

They don't need to be.

We're just trying out different ideas.

We're just finding out different ways of drawing cakes using that whole rule with topping, stand, and the cake is in the middle.

When experimenting, obviously presentation is key.

Try and keep all your cakes in a line.

We're talking about four or five on each line, and then move to the next line.

Again, if they're all nice and neatly in a line, as you can see the examples are, then that's going to look really smart.

You can see Helen Hancocks's example on the right-hand side here.

And of course, my examples are on the left.

Lots of different designs there.

You can obviously play around with what those stands are.

You can look at my stands and think, "Oh, I want to try and do that one or that one." Try not to just copy my one.

Try to think of your own different designs as you do them.

Again, remember having your stand, your cake, and your topping.

So think about this in advance.

You can see I've done a few here.

There's lots of examples on the slide, but again, it's up to you what you want to do.

You can see how I've done the top here.

We can have a cherry on the top.

Now, you can always do more decoration like that.

Next one, do much more block.

Notice how I've kind of kept it in line, see, with this one as well.

Now this one, I think to myself, maybe I'll go a little bit multiple layers.

Some cherries piled up on top.

That's a different type of cake.

Again, you can see waving a little bit off to the side there, but again, it's that same idea, isn't it? Let's do a bowl, almost kind of curved shape there.

Again, this is my cake here.

It can be a little bit more stranger, but then there's my topping.

Okay, and again, this time maybe we do something a little bit more stranger.

So this is still my cake stand.

But then this time I'm going to kind of plan ahead for my cake, a bit of classic chocolate cake.

And then on the top, we'll probably have some little things.

There may be a couple of candles.

Like so.

It's going to be up to you now.

You're going to have to pause the video and complete the task, okay? With 20 different drawings that take roughly one minute each.

This will take maybe about 20 minutes.

So don't speed through it.

Don't feel like it's something that should be just rush, rush, rush, rush.

It should take you time to do each one.

But again, each one is quite quick.

One minute at a time.

Remember to include the topping, the cake, and the stand for each one.

And experiment with different lines and pattern for your cake designs.

When you're ready, go.

Well done, I will assume that you have finished your 20 cake designs.

So I'm sure you'll find as the students I taught did, that when you get to past about seven or eight different designs, it starts getting quite tough.

That's where you're really stretching those creative muscles.

You're starting to think, "Okay, so can I do one with stripes?" Well, yes.

Can you do one with zigzags and crisscrosses? You have to start really thinking of different ways.

Two-tier cake, a five-tier cake, a one solid cake, a cake with little pieces in it.

These things are constantly things to think about.

Now, as you can see from these designs here, and especially Helen Hancocks's design on the left as well, colour with a cake is crucial.

Notice what is unique to these.

None of my designs really have any kind of colouring in.

I haven't just filled it all in, okay? Most of these are just on top of the lines.

So with your pens, I want you to think to yourself, how are you going to add colour to your designs? You can fill some in.

You can see I've got a little gold bowl there, for example, but for the most part, I've actually just gone over the lines with the pen.

So when you're ready, pause the video, and add colour to your cake designs.

Well done, so the next stage is looking at those designs and thinking about which ones are the good ones, which ones do you want to eat? Which ones do you want to make? And which ones are you going to use in your collage pieces in the coming weeks? Because we're going to use this as a kind of way to get ideas from this as we start creating collage cakes ourselves.

So lots of great things to look forward to there.

What keywords did we have this lesson? That's something to try and recall.

What were the keywords? It feels like a long time ago, now.

First up, line-drawing, an image that only uses line.

If you haven't filled anything in and you haven't done any tone, then of course it's a line-drawing.

So don't forget that.

Secondly, patterns.

Patterns were crucial today.

Lots of different patterns for lots of different cakes.

You had to really think outside the box for that.

Well done if you managed to use a lot of patterns.

Final keyword is experiment.

You've done 20 different experiments.

Experimenting is not about every single piece being perfect.

In fact, it's quite the opposite.

It's about realising which ones look good and which ones aren't so strong.

And that's great to know because of course, next time we look at this, we're going to use it for your own collage cakes.

So it's going to ask that question, which are the best ones and which ones are going to be good to turn into collage? So you need to think about these things when you experiment.

You've tested out all these designs, which of those designs are good designs? That's what we're thinking about now.

Well done, thank you for joining me today.

The next time we are going to be combining these drawn cupcakes with collage, but we need to create our collage pieces first.

So that's what we're coming to next.

Make sure you share your work as well.

I'd love to see what artwork you're producing.

This particular lesson has got loads and loads of different designs.

It is an endless supply of cakes that you can design with this process.

So I'd love to see them, showcase your work.

Show us what work you've produced on these cakes.

Please do ask your parent or carer for assistance if you're sharing your work to social media.