Firstly, this is NOT a history lesson or a history activity, but it linked well to our history topic around the Egyptians. (It was a hot and sticky Friday afternoon at the end of half-term so I needed something fun!) However, we did look at Tutankhamun's tomb using Mozaik3D, the Valley of the Kings and the Pharaoh's Curse before we started doing the art stuff, so there was a lot of history behind the whole thing, but let's be clear: painting isn't an historical activity!

 

I had already completed some other templates found on this site (https://www.artyfactory.com/portraits/chuck-close-project/chuck-close-art-lesson.html) and so I decided that I would create my own template linked to our topic. I found an image that I wanted, turned the image into black and white then fiddled with the contrast to make the lighter colours lighter and the darker colours darker. After that, I uploaded it to https://rasterbator.net/ where it blew up the image onto whichever size I wanted but each part of the image was now on an A4 sheet. After chopping the edges off of each sheet (the only faffy part of the whole process) I then handed them out to the children. Don't worry about the image being a little blurry and fuzzy, you won't see that when they've painted on top of it. The little sections in the corners of each page are your cutting markers to show where to cut each part so that it fits together smoothly.

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Some of the sections are a little clearer and easier to paint than others, so I gave those to children who didn't feel as confident with painting intricate details and those who were confident received the more complex sections. The children then worked on their own section before the whole thing was brought back and pieced together. Other than telling them the mechanics of it, I never actually told them which colours to use as it doesn't actually matter, so long as they follow the scheme, which is why you can see certain parts in one colour but the adjoining part a different one. Amazingly though, most of them used the appropriate blue for around the edges, which I never told them to do!

 

Top tip: number the sheets on the back in the middle BEFORE YOU HAND THEM OUT so that you can easily put them into the correct order once you've finished!

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Essentially, all the children have to do is paint/colour/decorate the light parts a light colour and the dark parts a dark colour. That's it! They can even include little patterns so long as they don't detract from the overall colour. We used simple poster paint for the colours plus some metallic paint for the gold, bronze and silver parts to try to make them 'pop' a little more, but you don't have to. I also told the children to paint in any white areas around the outside of the image to add a little more to it as the top left and top right sections only have a tiny amount to actually fill in on the image.