Visual Arts

Communicating with the Specialist Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2022, and welcome your input:

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

Welcome back to a fabulous new year of creating, crafting, painting, drawing, exploring, experimenting and much much more. Everyone has been settling back into routines and expectations in the first couple of weeks while setting up our Art books for the year ahead. These books will act as a visual diary, not only a place to experiment with materials, reflect and respond to their own and others artworks, but also a safe space for students to plan, express, and try new things without the pressure of creating a finalized artwork. It becomes an artifact students can look back on to see their progress and growth.

An Overview of our Learning

Foundation students will develop line and shape drawing skills by drawing about themselves and where they live. This glimpse into their thoughts and imagination is an important milestone for students to encourage them all to participate and settle in to art room expectations. Throughout Semester one our focus will be on developing fine motor skills by drawing, painting and cutting skills through a series of art projects. 

Year 1 and 2 students jumped right into some colour theory by exploring different things that the colour wheel tells us. We explored primary and secondary colours, but specifically warm and cool colours and the way the colour wheel can be chopped in half to show us which colours are which. Students used this knowledge to complete a section of our collaborative oil pastel collage to represent our school values. Students were encouraged to create interesting patterns, separating areas with cool or warm colours. 

This semester our focus is experimentation and discovery through drawing and painting, learning what different mediums can do and how to use it to create a variety of effects. 

This year we have started with the element of colour as we examine the colour wheel and how secondary and tertiary colours are made. Students are demonstrating their knowledge by painting colour mixing balloons, practicing drawing light and painting in a controlled way while still making each piece unique. Semester one will continue to develop our visual literacy and observation skills through drawing and painting projects, making decisions about shape, pattern and layout.

Semester one has a drawing and painting focus. Students explore how and why artists, craftspeople and designers realise their ideas through different visual forms by trialing their own ideas in their art books. They will draw ideas from other artworks and then plan and experiment with shape and colour before applying it to an artwork. Documenting their process is essential in art making. This allows students to realise their own ideas, making their work unique and meaningful. Our first project looks at the work of Australian artist Melanie Hava and her use of colour and animals and working with these ideas to start painting the backgrounds for our work. I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.