Visual Arts

Communicating with the Specialist Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2021, and welcome your input:

Danielle Haines (Visual Arts)  Danielle.Haines@education.vic.gov.au 

Wominjeka! Welcome to our school.

The big art news this week is our brand new mural that has been installed outside the office. Thanks to Craig for coming in on the weekend to install it.  If you haven't been in for a while make sure to come and see it in person. Created by local Indigenous artist Amanda Wright, it incorporates just some of our local native wildlife and is a wonderful addition to enrich our students experiences of art. 

The 5/6  art club have also been working hard on another addition to the welcome walk, painting 3 posts to go in the garden bed. More information on these as they near completion. 

An Overview of our Learning

Foundation spent some time learning about the artist Piet Mondrian, a Dutch painter famous for his abstract art and his use of primary colours inside thick black squares and rectangles. Students used his work as inspiration for their own abstract piece. They had to carefully paint inside their shapes so the colours wouldn't mix before adding black paint to add that random, abstract element to their work. 

This week we read the story 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' and made paper dolls of a bear so that the three bears are holding hands. This was another challenge to their cutting skills as they not only had to cut along the line but also cut three layers at once. I have seen fantastic improvement in all the students in this area as they continue to develop these fine motor skills and accepted this challenge with exceptional effort and resilience. 

Last week the year 2 students finished off their treasure maps by adding hints of colour so it still looked old and well worn. It was a challenge not to make them bright and full of colour but was made up for with details of treasure and hazards to watch out for. The year 1's are anxiously awaiting the opportunity to complete their maps in the coming weeks.

This week was all about the Impressionists and their 'dab dab' style of getting paint onto paper quickly to capture a moment rather than precisely to make an exact portrait which was the popular style of the time. Students investigated the work of Claude Monet and his exploration of poplar trees to inspire their own landscape painting. Over the coming weeks they will learn to add layers and mix colours to add variety and interest to their work. 

From the 4th of June to the 3rd of September, the National Gallery of Victoria will exhibit works of the French Impressionists including works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt and more. This is a wonderful opportunity to see these works in person.

Year 3 & 4 students completed their portfolio piece, adding jellyfish to their underwater painted backgrounds using soft pastel and seaweed using oil pastels. They explored how the soft pastel allows you to blend and smudge to give the jellyfish the impression of being translucent, while the pastel allowed for a sharper image of seaweed and plants on the sea floor. 

This week we connected with nature and natural materials by making our own paint brushes. Using leaves, grasses and other materials collected around the school, students assembled their brush and used it to create a background for our next artwork. They experimented with colours and methods of using their brush to make marks, swirling, sweeping, dragging and flicking until they were happy with the result. 

Year 5 and 6 students completed their radial colour wheel, painting and assembling all the pieces to great effect. It was wonderful to see the wide variety of designs created by the students, each one unique and individually painted. 

Using their knowledge of colour mixing, students will now apply this to a David Hockney inspired landscape. An introduction to perspective this week was applied to a landscape drawing, and will be painted using a variety of complimentary and contrasting colours.