A wash of water and splatter, dot, line

© Victoria Neumark 15/02/2002

A Times Education Supplement Article

Victoria Neumark joins primary pupils in Kew Gardens to get a feel for the art of Japan.

Picture a sunny morning at Kew Gardens early in the autumn term. Year 5 pupils from Bluegate Fields Junior School, Tower Hamlets, are making paper dolls in a green-and-white- striped marquee set up at Kew Gardens, in Richmond, Surrey. They wrap flowered origami paper around the slim shapes of Japanese figures and draw faces on them. Sukhdev looks at his doll critically. "Miss, I don't like the face." He brightens. "I like everything else." He glances round. Thrilled, intense, he confides: "I like the trees."

As Sukhdev's neighbours busily complete their dolls, his friend Rupon Miah's eyes sparkle: "I like everyone's dolls."
Trilby Lawlor, co-director of the Visual Learning Foundation, claps her hands. "Now," she says, "we're going to go outside to look at some trees and make drawings."

"Oh yes!" cries Ruhana.

"I saw a tree that was almost invisible," whispers Thania, "it had so few leaves."

Equally impressed, her friend Ruzina adds, "I saw a tree that was changing colour into purple."

In 1994, when advisory teachers Trilby Lawlor and Judy Cam had just been made redundant from the dissolved Inner London Eduaction Authority, they set up the Visual Learning Foundation (VLF). Activities such as Bluegate's visit to Kew were exactly what they had in mind. They now have premises in a disused science laboratory, publications (Masquerade, on African-Caribbean and European carnival and a forthcoming book on Japanese art), a programme of in-service training for teachers, regular after-school art classes for children from Islington and Camden, and a website, as well as a growing collection of awards.

The children making dolls at Kew this autumn morning are taking part in a programme devised by the VLF with sponsorship from the organisers of the Japan 2001 events. (www.japan2001.org.uk/). The group hurtle outside, tugging their tables with them, while Linda Francis, art co-ordinator at Bluegate Fields, helps Trilby Lawlor and her colleague Judy Cam carry out the blocks of Japanese ink and fine brushes that the children will use to make their drawings of trees.

As Trilby Lawlor starts to explain to the class the different techniques of painting with sumi-e ink and bamboo brushes - you can use the fine tip, the splodgy full brush, the feathery side, you can make a wash of water and splatter, dot, line - the children are enthralled, their fingers itching towards the paper as their eyes dart about the landscape. Kew Gardens is vibrant with the changing colours of early autumn, intoxicating the children. "They say they've never been anywhere so beautiful," says class teacher Debbie Lajoie.

"We're making the designs for Japanese screens," Trilby Lawlor reminds the children.
"Think about the divisions in the screens and how you can use those. Think about what information you can get on to your paper. What shapes do the branches make? Where are the fine branches? If you start with the tip of your brush, you can touch in tiny details. If you push down, the line goes wider. See what marks you can make. If you take lots of ink you can make this wonderful oily black scumbley line; if you put on water and then blob your ink in, the ink begins to run and you get a texture that could be like bark."

Judy Cam joins in. "Remember, we looked at photographs of screens. Pine trees could make a good picture for a winter screen, we thought. Look at this big, gnarled, old pine tree, with bare branches and thin, twiggy bits. Try lines which you think capture this pine tree, dry lines, wet flowing lines, wet patches. Make your marks on the paper."

The class seems borne along on waves of enthusiasm from the teachers. Linda Francis and Debbie Lajoie circulate among the children.

Kudhyjha puts up her hand. "Miss, I've done some fine lines."

Shahnara joins in, tracing a lattice of dramatic black stripes: "I've seen a pattern."

Sarwar traces Japanese-style characters, frowning. "I'm doing the writing," he says.

Trilby Lawlor holds up examples of different work - a medley of shapes from Julie, a wide wash with dreamy shapes form Habilbur, a thick black branch from Rupon, Nazrin laying even stripes on top of a grey wash. "Work fast, the Japanese work fast; look at each other's work, there are so many good ideas." She picks up Sukhdev's painting. "You can see all the veins on his, look, and the beautiful strips of needles on Ruhana's. How do you get those shadows?"

Kajol thoughtfully rubs her brush on the ink block. "I need the water and the ink to make the shadows," she says.
The work is collected, to be made into screens backed by cardboard later. The dolls will stand in front of the screens and Year 5 will have a display of what they learned one September morning by the old pine tree. As Trilby Lawlor puts it, Bluegate Fieldsa pupils have touched and been touched by another culture, in expanding their understanding of what art is and how it is made.

The VLF's work is startling in its scope and rigour. At every level, pupils research content, compare techniques and develop skills. Nursery-age children making Japanese prints of rain begin by looking at classic Japanese woodblock prints and different photographs. They go on to produce "emergent drawings" - quick, impressionistic scribbles - and explore the language used to describe weather, the sights and sounds and feelings of rain. They make new drawings, trying to use central images and finally produce a semi-abstract motif for a print: the spokes of an umbrella radiating into blue skies.

Key stage 1 pupils working on ikebana, the Japanese art of flower-arranging, move from a project on the flowering tree in their school garden and the importance of trees in general to looking at Japanese paintings and Japanese landscapes. They make their own paintings of bare branches with blossom. Then they each choose one stretch of their blossom branch. All the pupils' paintings are then sent to a pottery and come back glistening beneath the glaze on a blue Japanese plate.

Since 1994, more than 4,000 pupils and more than 5,000 teachers have enjoyed the VLF approach through courses, clubs and inset days. It aims to foster a love of art and a confidence in making art by providing a structured progression in expression and understanding. Every step is researched, resourced and reviewed. Whether the subject is ceremonial boxes of sweets given by Japanese people when they go on visits, Japanese street fashion, Japanese fans and neon lights, Chinese lanterns, 1940s fashion or thrones and chairs, VLF presents pupils with real-life examples, draws out underlying concepts, allies them to children's own experiences and ideas and then helps them to create work which marries skills and inspiration.

Nowhere is this clearer than in their programme for KS2 and 3 pupils making a maneki-neko sculpture. The maneki-neko is the sculpture of an anthropomorphised cat with which Japanese homes traditionally welcome guests. They can be a simple ceramic, a homemade structure or an elaborate artwork. Working first with sumi-e ink to sketch outlines and faces, then with costumes to isolate patterns for clothes (the cat usually wears a kimono but might wear the kind of modern Japanese street style called "fruits fashion"), the pupils design their cats on paper. They decide on accessories - modern Japanese ones such as mobile phones or traditional ones such as handbags - and design a maquette with card and wire, to see what will work in 3-D. Having modified the design, pupils build up papier mache on the armature and decorate the final figure with paint, ink and tissue-paper collages. With wit and vim, final figures include a flamenco cat and a warrior cat in Japanese armour, a cool cat with a personal stereo, a painterly cat with a palette and an elegant traditional cat with screens and handbag.

"It's very important that the children develop their own art, doing their own design and research," says Trilby Lawlor. "That's what we need to teach them, to make their art their own." VLF won the top prize awarded by the Japan Festival Awards in July 2000 for "promoting Anglo-Japanese cultural relations through art and design education".

Pupils respond immediately to the artistic seriousness of the pair. When teachers turn up with books, photographs and artefacts, display new techniques and new effects and then say, "You can do this", pupils think,"So I can." Linda Francis from Bluegate Fields says, "Their work is so exciting, I thought, I want us to be part of this." And as the children run off to their lunch, calling out to each other, "Look at that tree," she has her wish.

INSPIRATION THAT CLICKS

VISUAL Learning Foundation courses include planning and implementing a scheme of work in art and design in key stages 1 and 2; art in the foundation stage and KS1; thrones and chairs, cross-cultural design and sculpture; exploring and developing units of work from the QCA scheme; art and design days held at schools or at VLF base.
Resources include 'Masquerade', a pack of work units for KS1 and 2 on Caribbean and European masquerading tradition (£25 including post and packing) and 'Art Store 1', a series of Channel 4 programmes for KS2 art (to be shown again this year).

A new VLF book, 'Fans, Screens and Neon Lights - Exploring Japan through art and design education', is to be published later this year.

Art Present, a package of free VLF training and drawing materials for London primary schools, is also available, sponsored by Crayola UK Ltd. Work at Kew was sponsored by Japan 2001. Research and development was sponsored by the Daiwa Foundation and Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

VLF is based at Robert Blair School, Brewery Road, London N7 9QJ.Tel/fax : 020 7609 7155. www.visuallearningfoundation.fsnet.co.uk
 

Times Education Supplement