Our first artist study of 2026 is the infamous Frida Kahlo!
To begin our learning, we found out a little bit more about who she was. We learned that she was born in Mexico in 1907 and began painting after a bus accident in 1925 that left her seriously injured. She was a self-taught artist and in her work, she often referenced her Mexican heritage and she merged her love of nature and portraits to make captivating and strange, yet beautiful, paintings.
To understand her artwork further, we studied 3 self-portraits (Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair and Self-Portrait with Monkey). We considered why she made these images and what she wanted to capture. As a challenge, we had to decide which of these were our favourites and explain why. We noticed that nature was a theme within two of the portraits and she was often expressionless.
Our task was to create our own self-portraits inspired by Frida Kahlo’s work. To ensure that we felt prepared, we watched a video that explained how to draw self-portraits. We used mirrors to look at our reflections to ensure we were as accurate as possible! We aimed to include a range of plants in the background and as a challenge, tried to include a jungle animal. This ties in nicely to our new Geography topic of North and South America as we will be learning about the Amazon Rainforest (as well as other biomes). Some of us were able to add sloths, toucans and monkeys to the foreground of our work.
This week, we painted our sketches. Our objectives when painting were to include texture through paint mix. To do this, we thought about the ways in which we could use our brushes to create texture. Some of us also used colouring pencil and pen to add different textures too. We also had to combine colours and create tints, tones and shades. Using a range of shades in our backgrounds helped to define the foliage even better.
We hope that you love our artwork!
Year 5, how do you think you could improve your work even further?
It was really fun and I got the sloth in the background 🦥🦥🦥
IT WAS SO FUN!!!! I enjoyed this activity and loved painting! Thanks !
I could improve my artwork by adding more shades and colours to my skin. I could’ve also added more plants, animals, and colour for the background.
Maybe add a more variety of colours.
I really enjoyed doing the self portraits and learning about Frida Kahlo was so interesting. What I would like to improve about my portrait is that I would like to make my self portrait look more like me.
I loved doing this art lesson! Although my skin colour and animals look a bit weird but I loved mine.
Making self portraits was my favourite since I was five. But I really have to improve my skin colour so I can make it look like me. It was really fun!
Making a Frida Khalo inspired painting was very fun!You had to use lots of green because the background was meant to be animals and leaves of the Amazon rain-forest
🌿🐒🍍
This was so fun , I loved it!
I really enjoyed it . I loved mixing and making different shades. Thank you.
This was a fun lesson.
It was very fun. And I felt very creative!
This was a really fun lesson.I really enjoyed drawing my self portrait and then painting it.They all looked wonderful at the end!I drew a leopard in the background.🐆
This was so fun!