The Grand Depart in Leeds Topic with Year 5

I (Mrs.Chin), have just had the pleasure of working with the Year 5 children, Mr. Malley and Miss Kaye on an Art topic whilst the Year 6 pupils were at Residential. We were to create a design that combined a Leeds landmark and a bike which we would then print on to a T shirt.  This could then be worn when we went to see the Grand Depart in Leeds the first weekend in July.

First, we researched which Leeds landmark we wanted to use, for our printing.  The most popular were Bridgewater Place, The Civic Hall, Kirkstall Abbey and The Corn Exchange. We wrote down some facts about the buildings and shared them with the class.

Then we drew the building of our choice, paying special attention to the most prominent architectural features.

This drawing was then transferred on to card on to which we collaged different materials to create areas of texture and emphasise the most important parts like windows and doors.

Sometimes this could be quite detailed, like cut-out pieces of card or in contrast a whole area could just be covered in bubble wrap to create an impression of windows.

The next afternoon we inked up the templates and printed them on to paper.  This gave us an idea of what the finished print would look like and whether we liked the colours we had chosen and needed to add more detail to our templates.

There were some pre-made templates of competitors on racing bikes which I had made which we inked up, looking at where we would place them in relation to the buildings.

The next day, we printed on fabric samples before printing on to our actual T shirts.  This gave us one last final chance to alter our design, but also to practise the rolling process.

Then it was time to print on to our T shirts.  Here are some for you to see.

Some pupils were able to extend their designs further by printing a map as well as the landmark and bike.

This was achieved by using a block of Safeprint and scoring some lines into it to represent roads.

On to this background, another layer with different thicknesses of yarns, was overprinted.

The T shirts can be worn at the Grand Depart and it would be fabulous to have a photo of the children wearing them.  These, we can then put on our display in the school mall.