Visual Arts

Welcome Back!

I’m looking forward to a new term of art-making. This term, our students will build on skills they have learned previously to create works and learn about the elements and principles of art. It is a shame that our second week will be spent in lockdown, but I’m sure we will be back at school in no time.

Here is a selection of pieces started in week 1:

Foundation

The Foundation students are learning about life inside the Arctic Circle. They will be making artworks to be displayed alongside the milk bottle igloo that’s due to be completed in a few weeks. The students will learn about animals that live in this harsh location, then sculpt that animal from salt dough. Last week the students learned about the miraculous Aurora Borealis AKA The Northern Lights and created a background for their artwork from food dye and Epsom salts to represent the Northern Lights. 

To create this magical effect, the students painted their page with blue and green dye, then sprinkled epsom salt over the page to absorb some of the dye.

Year 1/2

The Year 1/2s are learning about microscopic organisms like bacteria. Their eventual task is to create a sculpture of bacteria growing in a Petri dish using a Styrofoam ball stuck to a paper plate. They will look to the Australian artist Pip and Pop for inspiration for. Their artworks. 

Last week the students watched some videos and looked at pictures of germs under a microscope, then made their own germs by tearing coloured paper and drawing details with a black pen. We used the tearing paper technique instead of cutting to give the shapes organic edges.

Year 3/4

The Year 3/4s are working up to a larger project which is creating stencils. Firstly they will complete a series of activities relating to positive and negative space. Positive space in an artwork is always the subject (the main focus or theme). Negative space is everything else (usually the background). In this example, the moon, clouds and stars are the positive space on both sides of the page. The negative space is the background, even though the colours are reversed on both sides of the page, the positive space remains the same - the moon, cloud and stars. 

Last week the students started their own version of the example by creating a wax resist on an A3 page.

Year 5/6

The Year 5/6 students are learning to draw human figures in motion by breaking the body  into simple shapes. They are working their way up to drawing a larger piece, but firstly  need to practice the basics of drawing human figures. 

Last week, the students made a collagraph using cardboard shapes. They arranged the shapes into pictures of people in motion, then took a rubbing of the collagraph with oil pastel and added details with a dark 6B pencil.