pictures-of-eyemouth-for-cross-curricular-friday

We have been studying the human body in Science this year and have enjoyed finding out all about our interesting organs and beautiful bones. We also have been looking at wonderful pictures in Art and our Cross-curricular lessons and we came across this fabulous painting that we thought tied our science in nicely with our art and our school!

The painting is by world renowned local artist John Bellany, who is a great supporter of Preston Lodge High School and its pupils, and is a representation of a boat in Eyemouth Harbour.

The pupils, who are thoroughly enjoying their physiology lessons in Science, immediately made a connection and we decided to look a bit more closely at Eyemouth, Bellany’s work and have a go ourselves of making pictures of Eyemouth, as well as eyes and mouths!

Firstly, we broke down the word Eyemouth into its two main component parts – was the town really called Eyemouth because of some famous eye and mouth? Nobody in the class was really sure, so we decided to do a bit of research.

We soon discovered that there was no eye in the biological sense but rather that there was a river called Eye Water that ran into Eyemouth Harbour. We then discovered that rivers have mouths too (but there are no teeth and no tongue). A river mouth is where the river flows into the sea.

So…Eyemouth is where the Eye Water flows into the North Sea – at the mouth!

We also decided to do a bit more research about Bellany – some of the pupils remembered that they had seen a picture by Bellany in Ms Nanson’s room and elsewhere in the school. Where would we find these pictures and could Ms Nanson help us in researching this artist?

We took the picture we had (the one featured at the top of the page) and we went on a Bellany Hunt round the school. Had we really seen more Bellany prints? Or were some of the pictures by someone else?

We went to a lovely picture of an arch that is hung just outside the main school hall. It is made up of lovely oranges and reds and browns and looks a lot like a Bellany in terms of colour but we soon realised it had been made by some of the school art pupils for On Our Doorstep and, no matter how attractive and professional it may seem, is not a Bellany. We had fun looking at it though.

However, it was not long before we did find more than one print of another Bellany picture in the school – and our brainiac memory wizards were to be proven absolutely 100% correct. Ms Nanson does have a Bellany print on her classroom wall! She was very pleased that some of her pupils had noticed it and remembered it. It was similar in style to our picture at the top and used many of the same colours. It was, however, of a different scene. We liked it a lot all the same – thank you Ms Nanson!

We found at least one other example of Bellany around the school building, showing his influence on our work, and we went back to class full armed to tackle our next task – to make our own version of Eyemouth Harbour trying to use the colours and style of the artist. We were going to have to choose our materials and equipment carefully…

Orange…yellow…brown…red…bright green…bright blue…big strokes….bold shapes…bright and warm. Some of the things we talked about before we started. The end results were spectacular and can be viewed on display in the Learning Zone from next week onwards.

We then looked at different artwork portraying Eyemouth Harbour in various ways – have a look for yourself by following the link at the top to some of the pictures we considered.

All of this interesting work came about because one of our pupils made the connection between their science work and the name of a place not far from Preston Lodge. We just love cross-curricular lessons!