TATE KIDS

Morning, everyone.

BIG news from the galleries today. I’ll start at the beginning!

John Constable (who was born in 1776, and died in 1837) is one of Britain’s best landscape painters. One of his very important paintings, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (painted in 1831) has been saved for the nation. This means that lots of groups and individuals (including Tate) put their money together to make sure the painting stays in galleries so you can come to visit it at a museum near you. You can come see it today if you (and your adults) like!

Some facts:
* The painting cost £23.1 million pounds (that’s a LOT of money – but it was actually a bit of a bargain because it’s worth around £40 million)
* It will be at Tate Britain until the end of the year, in the Constable Room.
* It will then go to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales; the National Galleries of Scotland; Colchester and Ipswich Museums, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. It will go to those galleries for about a year each, and then back to Tate Britain in 2018
* It was at the National Gallery before coming to Tate Britain, and was there from 1983 – have you seen it already?
* If you have seen it, you’ll know it’s very big – over six feet wide!
* Constable loved this painting – he called it The Great Salisbury and said:

“I am told I got it to look better than anything I have yet done.”

To celebrate, Tate Kids have made a special Constable playsheet (it’s quite a large PDF file, by the way). Download, print and enjoy! Feel free to send me scans or snaps of your sheets to kids@tate.org.uk and I’ll post some up on this blog.

See you in the Constable room soon, I hope!

SJ

Tags: About Art, About Us, Cathedral, Constable, Landscapes, Playsheet, Sailsbury, Tate Britain

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Hello Everyone!

Just thought I’d share this drawing with you – it’s from one of our youngest Tate Kiddies, Caitlin, who’s just two years old! Two!! If you look closely you can see that she has added legs and arms to her face too.

Actually, it reminds me of Constellations by Miro a bit – what do you think?

Well done Caitlin – keep up the good work! Everyone else – feel free to send in your artwork by emailing me or joining My Gallery.

SJ
Tate Kids Editor

Tags: About Art, Comments, Miro

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Charcoal is one of the most basic of all drawing materials. Maybe you’ve used it at school?

It is usually made of thin peeled willow twigs which are cleverly heated without the presence of oxygen. This changes the twigs into black, crumbly sticks. When you draw with a charcoal stick, it leaves tiny particles in the paper that can be very dark or very delicate.

Charcoal makes wider, smudgier lines than a pencil, so it’s good for free, loose drawing and sketching. You have to be careful though! Charcoal smudges easily. If you’re left-handed, you might find you’ve got a very grey arm when you’ve finished, by accident! You can protect your finished pictures with a special spray called a fixative.

What’s your favourite charcoal picture? Have you uploaded any to My Gallery?

Tags: About Art

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Assemblage is a way of making art from objects you have found, bought or scavenged – a bit like collage, but often 3D.  Picasso was an early user of assemblage, making works out of things like tablecloth and wood, which he would glue together and paint. The Surrealists liked to use this technique a lot too (but how did Dali come up with a lobster telephone?!), and it is still popular today.

© Succession Picasso/DACS 2002

Tags: About Art

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Have you ever drawn a picture that faded to nothing after being pinned to the wall?

Paper is very delicate – it’s easily torn and changes colour in direct sunlight. Try it yourself with a newspaper – leave one out for a week and watch it turn from grey to yellow. Even the brightest colours on the most expensive paper will fade! Imagine if you were an artist who liked to work with paper. It would be very be hard to keep your artworks for a long time!

This is why Tate has a special team of people who look after all the works we have that are on paper. They’re called PAPER CONSERVATORS. They have two very important jobs: they try to preserve the paper that the artworks are on, and also preserve the images on the paper.

They have lots of ways to do this. Tate has thousands of artworks on paper which are displayed at all four of our museums, so first of all we rotate what we have on display, making sure that no artwork is exposed to sunlight for too long.

Next it’s very important to make sure that the artworks don’t get wet, and this doesn’t just mean keeping them away from glasses of water! The amount of water in the air is very carefully controlled so the artworks aren’t exposed to harmful levels of moisture. Clever!

They’re even trying to invent a way to store paper artworks in frames that don’t have any oxygen in them – because it’s thought that the presence of oxygen in the air makes the inks on most papers fade faster. Wow!

Next time you draw a picture to put up on the wall, maybe you’ll pick a wall that’s not directly in the sun, or by the kettle, so it will last longer!

Tags: About Art, Conservation

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