Year 4s have had lots of fun using oil pastels to create their very own scratch art piece inspired by the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee. First, we studied Klee's Surrealist 1925 painting, Fish Magic, which depicts an intermingling of aquatic, celestial, and earthly entities. This painting is covered by a delicate surface of black paint, under which lies a dense layer of multicoloured pigments. The colourful figures were then scratched and scrawled out by Klee on the dark background, leaving a rather magical effect. Quite a few Surrealist artists of this time used grattage and sgraffito techniques in their work—essentially scratching into wet paint or through a dried surface. We thought it would be great to explore similar techniques to Klee, so we started by filling an A4 sheet of white card with lots of oil pastel colours.

Some pupils wanted to go wild with colour, while others preferred to have more of a balanced, considered scheme. There was lots of freedom with creating the colourful under-surface, so pupils were encouraged to explore different mark-making, shapes, and blending. Once their surface was covered with colour, they set about painting over the entire piece with black paint mixed with a little liquid soap. With the preparation done and their piece put aside to dry, the class then looked at more Klee paintings to try and get some ideas for patterns and motifs to sgraffito into their own scratchboard next week!