Die Entführung aus dem Serail Teaching Resources
Die Entführung aus dem Serail Art and Design
Artist links: Sonia Delaunay (work: La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France)
Curriculum links: Numeracy
Task: Making shapes; where do patterns come from?
Key Stage 2
Show this image for 10 seconds and then hide, ask the students:
- What is the man in the centre left holding out? (a ship)
- Describe the patterns in the windows, what shapes were they made from? (Circles, rectangles, squares, diamonds, semi-circles)
- Guess what could be beyond the windows?
Suggested activities:
- Lay out a large roll of paper, ask students to make shapes on the paper and draw around them to create a repeating pattern, for example, lie down in a circle with legs outstretched (see photographs below).
- Fill the background with more Islamic or fractal patterns in between the figures using stencils or use visual elements like repeating circles from Sonia Delaunay’s fabric designs by drawing round circular objects/ use protractors.
Key Stage 3
Extension: Islamic Pattern/Prints
Suggested activities:
- Use close up drawings of real flowers/photographs as a starting point to create several small motifs.
- Plan out the motifs on the Moroccan stencil shown here. Then each student cuts a polystyrene pizza base or tile using the Moroccan tile stencil and copies their design onto to the tile (take care not to press too hard with a pencil as it will make a hole in the tile).
- Cover the tile evenly with a layer of water based printing ink, and then print onto a variety of colours/ types of paper. Then, cut sections away from the tile to create a more complicated subtractive print, and ink up the tile again, print over the first colour. Use colours inspired by Sonia Delaunay or Moroccan tiles/pottery.
- Make a big, collaborative wall of tessellating, printed tiles.
Key Stage 4
Extension: Abstract illustration
Artist link: Illustrated manuscripts
Suggested activities:
- Students either choose a poem or song lyrics they like and create abstract patterns around the text (inspired by Sonia Delauney’s illustrated poem, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France, by Swiss-French poet Blaise Cendrars.) Use basic shapes, zentangle patterns or Islamic pattern as a starting point.
- Use found paper like second hand books or maps and add cover with fractal or zentangle patterns and designs. Experiment with colour combinations/ colour theory.