Arts News
Visual Arts
Most Visual Arts students have been painting on canvas in the past 8 weeks of school. The Grade 7 classes have been on a painting journey through art history, focussing on and reproducing a number of artists and styles, from cave paintings and illuminated manuscript letters to Mondrian colour fields, and Picasso portraits.
The Grade 8 students focussed on the fruits of the spirit, and while sketching our own fruit still life's, we also learned how to make a pleasing selection from our drawings and photo references for a unique painting composition. We then magnified the selection and zoomed in to create colourful and energetic paintings as shown below. As well, each student chose an “fruit” artist such as Archimboldo, Guevara, Faustina or Wojtkiewicz, to study in depth, some even attempting to mimic their unique styles. They have all been doing an amazing job, many of the canvases look promising and will be completed in the next week.
(5 photos in this gallery)
The Grade 9 students have been painting in response to an impressionist artwork while the Grade 10 students have responded to an artwork from one of the Dutch masters, each requiring different techniques, a high level of trust in the process, a healthy sense of risk-taking and a lot of patience with self and one another. While we hang up our artwork in the art room for now, we look forward to showcasing our results early in Term 4 for our annual Arts Showcase.
(5 photos in this gallery)
Mrs Dianne Vanderplas
Visual Arts Teacher
Drama
This term in Drama, students are investigating a wide range of topics, genres, and contexts. Grade 7 students have been studying ‘Characterisation’ with students exploring a variety of different characters, focussing on back story, physicality, voice work, and traits.
Grade 8 students have been diving into the world of ‘Improvisation’ which is helping students to develop their creative thinking skills and requiring them to be flexible and spontaneous – this has meant a great deal of laughter and joy for students and Teacher alike!
Grades 9 and 10 students are immersing themselves in script work with Grade 9 focussing on duologues and Grade 10 preparing monologues for performance. Students are being led through the process of bringing a text to life by creating authentic characters and considering how an actor might best approach a script, looking at their character’s goals, obstacles, their use of tactics as well as their expectations.
Mrs Leaora Adams-Bell
Drama Teacher
Music
This term in Music, students have focused on applying music concepts to their practical skills.
Grade 7 students are currently working on their understanding of roles in music, how to identify them, and understanding how to build harmony by playing piano chords along with some popular music.
Grade 8 students are exploring the world of Blues music, it’s formation, history and structure. They are learning how to compose, perform and improvise in the structure of the 12 bar blues. They are using Digital Audio workstations and learning how to use traditional notation software.
Grade 9 students are putting on their detective hats as we inquire into whether Rock music is plagiarism or not, with reference to Australian music identity. This involves playing music, understanding harmonic and melodic sequences, and comparing music from different periods of time and connecting them to the modern day, from Baroque, Classical and Popular Music in the 1950s-2000s.
Grade 10 are learning about American Gospel Music, its historic contexts in slavery, race relations, church differences and more extended harmony concepts in arranging and performance. Students are hard at work as they take on band leadership roles, accompaniment and ensemble work with organising their performance pieces with other class members as they prepare for end of term and year performances.
The Rockband and SALT are well recovered after a couple of big mornings leading worship at the Christian Schools Australia Conference back in week 3. They are now working towards performance evenings and are having fun practising some popular pieces along with their worship repertoire.
(10 photos in this gallery)
I was also pretty ecstatic to win best dressed faculty on Secondary book week! Still waiting for our prize Mr Hull.
Andy Nguyen
Secondary Music Teacher