The Arts at Hackham East Primary School

I would like to take the time to welcome back everyone to another exciting year within the Arts, at Hackham East Primary School.

My goal is to provide our students with a range of ways to broaden their creative thinking, in order to allow them to further express themselves individually. This Term, we will be focusing on Visual Arts as an artistic medium. Specifically, allowing students the opportunity to explore different creative techniques, the fundamentals of art and application of different Artistic materials, through exploration of a variety of Artistic Styles.

Castle Unit

Students within Castle have currently been experimenting with a variety of different art media – including art styles such as pencil, pen, markers, oil pastels, paint and collage. Students have been using these tools to facilitate the expression of their own ideas, enabling them to convey their unique interests, feelings and personalities. The introduction of Abstract Art to our Reception classes has allowed students to use their imagination when creating and responding to different artwork. Students have been exploring Abstract Art and have been learning about the techniques associated with this style. We will continue to unpack this style over the next few weeks and students will have the opportunity to apply these techniques into their own paintings through exploration of colour. Our students have also been looking at the works of different artists to see how we can incorporate these materials into our own created art pieces. The Year 1/2 classes looked at the art style of Illustrator Eric Carle (author of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’) and practiced with collage techniques and paint to reinterpret his work in their own individual way. As the Term progresses, students will also look at the works of artists such as Van Gogh and Claude Monet, as a means to further explore different techniques and artistic tools.

Year 3, 4, 5

Our Year 3/4/5 students have been building on their prior knowledge and understanding of different Art concepts, using techniques such as line, shape, pattern, shading and colour, to create their own ‘Optical Illusion Art’. Although seemingly tricky at a glance, students took on the challenge of applying their favourite colours at varying weights, in order to create an image that gives the impression of movement and shape. The result was a collection of student artwork that is vibrant, eye-catching and is able to manipulate the perception of the viewer or audience. Beginning this week, students will begin exploring Portraiture and will begin to discover the design elements and visual conventions specific to this style. Students will experiment with facial proportion as well as incorporating a range of different visual ideas that represent themselves.

Year 6/7

Using the theme ‘Our School, a Community of Learners’, our Year 6/7 students within Holly have begun the Term experimenting and creating Art for an activity we’ve named ‘Our Hive’. Hackham East Primary School has a strong focus on Values and Ideals that are intrinsic to adopt not only at school, but also within our daily lives. Within our classrooms, there is a strong emphasis on collaboration, respect, support, drawing inspiration from each other and ensuring the wellbeing of every student. I felt that many of these themes drew similarities to a Beehive, where every Bee works together and has a specific role and purpose within the colony. If there is a weak link, or if that support network fails, then all Bees within that community are affected by this. Students spent time experimenting with different visual ideas before applying these designs to a ‘Honeycomb’ template. While each piece of student artwork is striking in its own right, when linked together, the art becomes more of a collaborative installation piece. It represents the idea that although we are individuals, we each have a purpose and role to play within our community. Upon completion of this task, our upper primary students will soon begin creating ideas for our ‘Street Art’/’Artist Investigation’ art activity.

I am looking forward to seeing the creativity that each student will bring within the Visual Arts topic.

Stephen Di Girolamo, The Arts Teacher