Nature Wheels

And harvest moons

I recently created a new activity for The Hepworth Wakefield to celebrate the arrival of Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red by Barbara Hepworth. This important sculpture was nearly lost to a private collection overseas, but thanks to a joint campaign by The Hepworth and Art Fund and lots of public support, it’s now staying here in the UK. It took £3.8 million, but now it’s in a public gallery where everyone can enjoy it. The activity is a fun way for visitors to connect with the sculpture’s while in the gallery.

Photo credit - The |Hepworth, Wakefield.

This hands-on looking and drawing activity encourages families to spend time with the sculpture and encourage looking at it from different angles, walking around it, and noticing the way it changes as you move. One of the most interesting parts of the sculpture for me is the use of strings. They invite you to look both inward and outward, drawing your eye through the oval form and creating a sense of movement.

Barbara Hepworth once said:
“The strings were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills.”

Hepworth was constantly inspired by nature and the landscape and I wanted to take that as a starting point for this family activity.

To begin by encouraging families to look closely at natural objects, like shells, stones, and leaves, and to notice the lines and patterns within them. I always associate the black stones with the curved lines running though them with Hepworth sculptures and i really love the easy link for children to make with collecting these natural treasures and how Hepworth used them as inspiration.

A couple of nice drawing activities are:

• Continuous line drawing, where you keep your pencil on the paper without lifting it, and

• Repeated patterns, repeating the same mark or shape to create a pattern

I originally created this activity using the same colour palette as Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red, but lately I’ve been really inspired by autumn textures of leaves, acorns, pine cones and I wanted to make a seasonal version to share here too.

Also I recently bought myself a new circle cutter gadget and needed a good excuse to play with it! With the harvest supermoon moon tonight, everything feels a bit circle themed right now.

Over the weekend, I made leaf rubbings with my children, I’ve added some of those into this version of the activity. I have used whatever was to hand in the studio such as coloured pencils, Neocolors, and some cheap wax crayons too.

To bring everything together, just pop a split pin through the centre and you’ve got a layered, spinning piece of autumn.

The images below show a few variations and a little spinning video.