What's On In Visual Arts

Visual Arts - Junior 

What a wonderful Term 4 we have ahead in Visual Arts! Our junior school artists are exploring new ideas, experimenting with exciting materials and creating artworks that are full of colour, imagination and personality. 

Our Foundation artists have been diving under the sea this term! Inspired by their Term 3 Sea Life excursion, students have been exploring the wonderful world of fish, learning about their different features and experimenting with a variety of ways to draw them. We are soon to bring our ideas to life by creating large, puffy, colourful fish sculptures! We will continue our underwater adventures as we explore other sea creatures later in the term.

Our Grade 1/2 artists have been exploring the colourful world of Howard Arkley and the meaningful stories, places and cultural connections found in Shirley Purdie’s artworks. Students are using colour, bold patterns and their own creative ideas to bring a space that is special to them to life! Inspired by Howard Arkley’s bold patterns and vibrant colours, students are creating artworks based on a space that is special to them. Along the way, we are experimenting with a range of exciting materials and techniques, including acrylic paint, paint sticks and gel plate printmaking. It has been lovely seeing the creativity, personal stories and wonderful ideas coming through already. 

Visual Arts - senior 

It’s so exciting to have joined the Specialist team for Term 4 at Whitehorse Primary, and it has been lovely getting to know all of the students, (mainly the Seniors) over the last few weeks. My name is Ebony Dijk (rhymes with ‘bake’😁), or Mrs D if it’s easier, and I have had the pleasure of being an Art teacher for around 16 years, and it is something that I am very passionate about. I’m looking forward to teaching the Senior students in Art this term, and seeing where our creativity and imagination takes us. I love a good theme, and you may see me sporting a lot of colour or something quirky to reflect the theme we’re covering in Art, so please introduce yourself and say hi.

The Grade 6’s have been very keen to finish projects for their graduation and have been especially eager to create their skateboard designs! After doing some get to know you activities in the first week, students learned a brief history about Street art and the rise of graffiti in the early 70’s, and had great discussions about this type of art, its’ validity and its’ purpose and shared their opinions. They discussed typography, explored various font styles and practised designing their name in ‘graffiti’ style.  Grade 6 students briefly looked at various contemporary artists and their style of work such as Mulga the Artist, Reg Mombassa, and Happy Decay (the wonderful artist who painted the brightly coloured abstract mural on the gym at your school), as inspiration. Students planned out their skateboard design to reflect themselves and their personal style, working out colours, the steps/process ie. painting or spraying the layers, stencilling, masking and how to use the space to create an interesting composition. They will be developing their knowledge of Art elements and principles including balance, emphasis, contrast, colour, line, shape, pattern, movement and proportion throughout the process. They have already created some amazing concepts, so I can’t wait to see how they develop. Hopefully, students will also have the chance to work collaboratively on a legacy project too, later in the term.

While Grade 6’s are working on their project, the grade 5’s are looking at typography, lettering and fonts also and are looking at radial symmetry, using the letters of their name to create an interesting mandala style pattern, and decorating it using pencils and markers to add detail. They will focus on pattern, line, shape, space, repetition, balance and value. We will also look at some other Australian artists and explore painting and collage to create their own festive Artwork, towards the end of term.

After our intro and get to know you session, the Grade 3/4's did an artist study of Brazilian artist, Romero Britto who is one of the most commercial artists on the planet, working with lots of big brands and companies including Disney, FIFA and Coco-cola. Britto’s work is inspired by pop art and cubist styles, using dark bold linework to create sections and filling them with simple but interesting, colourful patterns and shapes. The subject matter he chooses is always related to things he loves and his mission is to spread positivity and joy to all, creating paintings, prints and sculptures of animals/pets, happy people, famous people, flowers, landscapes and other lovely things. Students in 3/4 used their observational skills to understand Britto’s style, and used his work as inspiration to draw their own concepts and create their own Halloween, Spring/Summer artwork.

You can see more of Romero Britto’s work here… https://www.shopbritto.com/pages/the-artist

Towards the end of the term, students will explore construction, using paper, cardboard and various bits and bobs such as egg cartons, boxes, bottle caps and lids, corks etc to create their own assemblages and 3D artworks, using various joining techniques and at the end of the term, will work on papercraft and quilling techniques to create a festive decoration.

It’s going to be a busy, but exciting term!