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 

Term 2 has begun! 

What better way to start a fresh term than with a whole school collaborative art project. With ANZAC day at the end of our first week back we talked about what ANZAC Day means to us in Australia and the way we use a poppy as a symbol of remembrance and to raise money for our veterans and their families. The poppy has been used in this way for over 100 years, inspired by John McCrae and his poem In Flanders Fields.

Each year level made a poppy to attach to our ANZAC banner to great effect. 

Foundation made a paper collage 

year 1 and 2 used food dye on fabric and glued buttons in the centre

year 3 and 4 used filter paper and food dye with paper fringing 

year 5 and 6 practiced sewing a button onto felt poppies

A big thank you to our art captains Hannah and Tristan for helping to put the poppies on the banner and putting it up on display (with Mr Kitch's help).  

It can be seen in the main corridor outside the computer lab.

An Overview of our Learning

Term 2 in foundation will explore colour and how it is used to create different moods and feelings. They will continue to practice brush control and painting techniques in a variety of artworks. Students will also continue to refine their cutting skills with paper collage work. These precise cutting skills take lots of practice to continue to develop their fine motor skills. 

This week foundation students have been working on an artwork for someone special using negative space. We talked about positive and negative space and used masks, or a shape to block an area, to protect it from getting paint on it. 

This term students in years 1 and 2 will continue to practice painting techniques and brush control. They will look at artists works to develop their awareness of how and why artists, craftspeople and designers express their ideas through different art forms. 

Students will examine the work of Vincent Van Gogh and use his work as inspiration for their own landscape piece as well as illustrators such as Eric Carle and Polly Dunbar.

This week year 1 and 2 students examined Franz Marc's 'Blue Horse' and Eric Carle's book, 'The artist who painted a blue horse'. This book journey's through a young artists imagination as he draws a blue horse, a red crocodile and a yellow cow. Year 1's talked about contrasting colours and the way orange contrasts with blue as it sits opposite the colour wheel and painted orange textured paper with acrylic paint before painting a background for our  orange paper collage elephant artwork next week. Year 2 dug a little deeper by examining the background and colours for the sky other than blue so that their horse blue horse would stand out, painting backgrounds ready for next week. 

In term 2, year 3 and 4 students will explore colour theory and painting techniques, applying them to a number of artworks. We will examine the work of Margaret Preston and and Claude Monet among others to see how they used colour in their works and what they were trying to achieve from it.  

This week students used the textured papers they painted back in term 1 to begin a paper collage art work. This special piece will be framed and sent home for someone special so I won't share too much detail here. 

Term 2 will have a strong focus on painting skills, introducing and consolidating colour theory, mixing colours, using correct terminology and applying them to an artwork. We will explore the work of landscape artist, Peter Griffen and collage artist Pete Cromer. 

This week students examined the colour wheel, mixing their own secondary and tertiary colours from just the three primaries. We also discussed colour theory terminology such as analogous, complimentary and monochrome. These fundamentals in art and design allow students to better understand and apply techniques to painting tasks in the coming weeks.