Primary 3 exploration of Magritte’s artwork

P3EN & P3DE (EEB1, Brussels) have been studying Magritte’s artwork.

• We looked at The Son of Man and coloured in a copy of this artwork using pastels, crayons and colouring pencils.
• Then the children drew their own self-portraits inspired by this masterpiece. Instead of the apple they added something that is important to them.

After, we observed Magritte’s Sky Bird and The Empire of Lights and this encouraged us to create a mega Magritte mural using the ideas from his artwork.

• We first painted the background using light blue paint and we made the clouds using sponges.
• Then we painted some sheets of paper black and cut out some shapes to represent hills at night time, as well as adding a glowing lamp post.
• Later, the P3DE class painted night birds with dark blue and yellow paint and placed them in the daytime sky. Meanwhile, the P3EN class painted day birds with light blue and white paint and placed them on the night time hills. This created an ‘opposite’ effect, which Magritte used in many of his artworks.
• We placed the birds in a way to look like they were all flying to the same destination. We were well prepared to follow a guided tour in the Magritte Museum in Brussels. Our guide was fascinated to see a picture of our display.

Here are some reflections of the pupils on this project.

‘I think the museum was great fun because everything looks so unusual’ Santiago

‘After the museum visit I got inspired to draw some of my own pictures like Magritte’s artwork’ Juliana

‘I was happy to draw my own self portrait and draw something that was important to me in the middle’ Tancredi

‘It was good to go to the museum because you discover new artwork you have never seen before’ Mila

Written with the P3 teachers, Nicola Gray & Kerstin Bocquet.