Visual Art

What's Been Happening in Visual Arts?

In Our Communities... 

Luna & Argus Communities (Preps)

Our Foundation students have spent the term combining a love of picture story books with art, to create collages and sculptures inspired by the books they’ve been reading in class. Their focus has been on books that are based on sea creatures, learning about different animals as they explore the beautiful artworks. Indigenous illustrator Balarinji (Who Saw Turtle) and Eric Carle (Mister Seahorse) bring the sea animals to life with their wonderful illustrations. Students have examined and compared the differences between the artworks and used them as inspiration to create their own collages of different styles. A highlight for students has been experimenting with different tools to paint and create textures. 

You may have had your own child come home with a blue face (apologies), as they experimented with bubbles to create a beautiful, soft ocean background or perhaps blue hands as they used sponges and acrylic paint to create waves, as a bold and fierce ocean backdrop. Students have developed their skills painting, drawing, tracing and cutting as they have learnt about placement and arrangement whilst putting all of their different ideas together to form a picture. Please enjoy some examples of their collages and turtle sculptures below! 

Argus, Xenica & Ulysses Communities (Year 1&2)

Under, over, under and over…students in Year 1&2 have been following patterns as they learn to weave with paper, wool and string! It takes a lot of patience and skill to master the art of the weave, and students have been putting their best efforts in to achieving this goal, creating some beautiful artwork along the way! 

In case you missed our finished Emotion’s Monsters in the last newsletter, please enjoy some more of our 1&2’s creations. They were proud to have their photos taken with their work (as you can tell by their faces), before taking their sculptures home to display. Images of their completed work are on display in the artroom. 

Apollo & Icarus Communities (Year 3 & 4)

The Year 3&4 Communities have been developing their skills with observational drawings of naturally found objects. One challenge student’s often face when attempting to draw things that they are looking at, is accepting that their images can look fantastic without looking exactly the same as the thing they are trying to draw. So, how did the 3&4’s work to overcome this? Drawing with their non-dominant hand! Students took to their drawings with a buzz at the challenge of drawing with their hand they aren’t comfortable drawing with! They let go of some of the difficulties of trying to get the pictures just perfect and ended up being really surprised with their results! 

Then, using water-coloured pencils and paints, along with some bright paint sticks, students gave life to their nature drawings by using complementary and harmonious colour schemes in their work. The last step they have to complete their work, will be to cut out all the beautiful images they've drawn and coloured to arrange them into a lovely artwork. Please enjoy some of their gorgeous work below! 

Monarch Community (Year 5&6)

The Monarch Community have continued working on different activities, switching between creating their own clay tiki’s (faces inspired by tikis), or carving out a lino print and experimenting using it with paints. Lino printing was hard, but students persevered with the challenge and produced some beautiful results. When asked how they felt about creating their lino carving, they expressed that it was hard smoothing out their design, sometimes a bit tricky using the tools (especially getting the hang of using the safety guards) but overall enjoyed the experience and would be keen to try it again! Students did however express that they would like bigger pieces of lino next time, more shapes, and more variety in carving tools. 

Students in 56C&D will complete their lino-prints in the beginning weeks of Term 4, and students of 56A,B &E will complete their clay sculptures. Completed artworks will be posted in the next newsletter! 

Thursday Art Club!

Art Club has continued throughout the term (with the exception of wet weather) and students have had a chance to freely explore their creativity with drawing, colouring, painting and modelling clay. 

Wild at Art 2022 – Australian Conservation Foundation

Wild at Art is a yearly run art competition that let’s children unleash their artistic creativity while learning about Australia’s threatened animals and plants – and the threats facing them. 

Throughout September and October, children aged 5-12 are invited to create an original artwork of one of Australia’s many threatened native animals or plants, along with a short-written component on their chosen threatened species. 

Online submissions are open from Wednesday 7 September (Threatened Species Day) to Monday 31 October. 

Please follow the link for more information and where to submit a photo of your child’s artwork:

https://www.acf.org.au/wild-at-art-competition

This could make a great holiday activity and I encourage all students to participate! There are several different entry categories as well as prize giveaways. Artworks must be the child’s original work and either a painting, drawing, or mixed media work such as a collage. Three-dimensional work, photographs, digitally created work and videos will not be accepted.

Please follow the link for tips and ideas for helping your child get started creating their own masterpiece! 

Visual Arts

Suzie Kirk