5th and 6th Class: Visual Arts

Interesting Info: Mary Robinson

In today's lesson, Múinteoir Clíona used an image of former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, to show you how to draw a picture to scale. Here are some interesting facts about her.

1) Mary Robinson became Ireland's first female President, paving the way for Mary McAleese who filled the role after her. Robinson was president from 1990 to 1997.

2) Growing up, Mary wanted to be a poet and then she wanted to become a nun. How different history might have been, had she followed either of those paths instead!

3) Before she went to study law in Harvard in America, she was a shy girl but she taught herself to overcome her shyness by joining as many debates as possible, so she trained herself not to freeze up when talking in public.

4) Robinson was the first serving Irish President to visit the United Kingdom and meet Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

5) She established the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.

Send us pictures or videos of what you have done. Ask your parents to help you send them to rte.ie/learn

Make and Do: Viewfinder

Múinteoir Clíona showed us how to make a viewfinder, using an image of Mary Robinson that she loved. Here's how you make it!

What you need:

A picture you really like. This can be a print-off, a photograph or a picture from your favourite book

Card (a cereal box is handy for this!)

Stapler

Pencil

Sticky tack

Step 1: Cut out 4 strips of card, approximately 1 inch thick.

Step 2: Staple two pieces of card together in an 'L' shape then do the same with the two remaining pieces.

Step 3: Hold them together as shown in the image, to create your viewfinder. This viewfinder is adjustable by sliding the pieces of card closer together or wider, so you can select different sized areas of a picture.

Step 4: Put the viewfinder on a section of an image, the more detailed the better! To keep it from moving off the section you can use sticky tack to stick it down!

Step 5: Draw the image to scale! You do this by measuring the viewfinder area using the pencil as a measurer, then find out how many times it needs to be multiplied to blow it up to the size of the page! You do the same with any of the details. For example, the length of the viewfinder fits into the page they're drawing on 5 times, you do it 5 times the size!

Activity: Get Creative

Create a picture of a celebrity or person you admire, in the style of the Mary Robinson portrait that Múinteoir Clíona used. Don't forget to use lots of colour and send it into us if you’d like!