Hello 2016!

Posted on February 9, 2016 by kerrieannebolongaita

Welcome back everyone! I am so excited to start the year off in our new Art Studio! We are in Room 29 in the Year 4 block and are well underway with decorating and setting it up like a real creative learning environment. We are already into our second week and it’s great to see such positive learners, eager to try new ideas and experiment with new materials and techniques. This year there will be a big focus on Art Literacy where we will learn to talk about art and artists like professionals! This will be a journey of discovery through history, techniques, mediums and subject matter and we will get to know how people study and describe Art. Through exploration and guidance, we will try many different techniques using a variety of mediums. We will be trying our hand at print making, weaving, dyeing, sewing, drawing, painting and sculpture to name a few. I also hope to involve the students in the planning, designing and making of outdoor art for the school grounds. Let’s get busy. Let’s get CREATIVE!!!

First week drawing challenges

Posted on February 9, 2016 by kerrieannebolongaita

Year 4 drawing challenge – 5 minute sketches of Mrs B!

We started off with a drawing challenge in the first week which for the Year 4’s involved a 5 minute time limit to draw a portrait of Mrs B! Year 3’s drew a tree and Year 1’s a picture of themselves as artists. This was a great way to talk about the diverse group of creative learners we have. We discussed how we all had different styles, techniques and ideas in the same class and we also have different abilities. From here, we were able to write our Essential Agreements as a class which are now on display in our Art Studio. This pre-test drawing challenge was also a great way to give me an idea on where we are at in terms of drawing skills and confidence level. From here we can only improve with our skills and confidence! I am loving all the different styles of drawing in our Year 4, 1 and 3 groups this year so far. I can’t wait to see what else these clever little people come up with next.

Day of the Dead

Posted on December 9, 2015 by kerrieannebolongaita

Year 3 Artists have been exploring line, space and colour in designing a decorative skull for their ‘Celebrations’ unit. ‘The Day of the Dead’ or Día de los Muertosis celebrated in Mexico, is a celebration of life. Children during this traditional celebration learn about the circle of life. They are taught to respect that life is brief, and that one must learn to enjoy and appreciate every moment. The celebrations, lasting over two days include families coming together to make elaborate decorations and costumes for parades and making and decorating sugar skulls. Unlike the American tradition of Halloween where the aim is to scare the spirits away, the decorating of skulls during the ‘The Day of the Dead’ tradition depicts the beauty of life with flowers and other embellishments. We enjoyed viewing an award winning animated short by film students to give us an introduction to the celebration.

Women dressed for the parade in Mexico

Decorated skulls

Animals and Habitats

Posted on December 8, 2015 by kerrieannebolongaita

Year One Artists have been looking at animals and their habitats as part of their unit of inquiry this term. We focused on two artists, one photographer and one illustrator, who’s artwork show animals and their habitats in very different ways but both equally beautiful. We talked about artists’ purpose and why these two artists may have chosen to portray the animal’s habitat inside the animal. We also explored the different mediums and techniques used by the artists to achieve different effects. Andreas Lie, a photographer uses a double-exposure technique to combine two photographs and Daniel Mackie an illustrator uses pencil and paint to create his highly decorative animals. For our own interpretation of this style of art, the Year One’s used pencil to plan the design inside their animal outline and then used water colour pencil to add colour.

Fox by Andreas Lie

daniel-mackie-art-deco-ukiyo-e-influenced-animal-illustrations-08

Fox by Daniel Mackie

Marvellous Mandalas

Posted on October 27, 2015 by kerrieannebolongaita

Year 1 artists have been learning about Mandalas. The word “mandala” is from the classical Indian language of Sanskrit. Loosely translated to mean “circle,” a mandala is made of symbols that traditionally represent wholeness and remind us of our relation to the world. Students first spent time designing their own unique symbols to represent their interests and things that are important to them. We then followed a simple step-by-step process of making the outline of the mandala before decorating it with our chosen symbols. Mandalas are considered an artform that is deeply relaxing to make. We focused on the center of our Mandala and tried to ‘quiet’ our minds while listening to classical music as we worked. Our mandalas aren’t quite finished yet but I wanted to share how beautiful our designs are so far.

Our world in colour

Posted on October 27, 2015 by kerrieannebolongaita

Year 3 artists have been learning about colour theory over the past two weeks. We first looked at Isaac Newton’s ideas on colour and how he invented the first colour wheel before we experimented with our own colour mixing. We learnt about Primary colours and which combinations of primary colours make Secondary colours. We then designed our own decorative border to display our finished colour wheels. They turned out great!

colour wheel

Our next lesson on colour involved a science experiment to explore Newton’s colour theories. We talked about refraction and then looked at how colours seem to blend together when the colours are spinning faster than what our eyes can keep up with. Sunlight isn’t light of just one colour—it’s what we call white light, made up of all the different colours mixed together. We know this because we can see rainbows, those colourful curves that appear in the sky when droplets of water split sunlight into its component colours by refracting (bending) different colours of light by different amounts.Why does a tomato look red? When sunlight shines on a tomato, the red part of the sunlight is reflected back again off the tomato’s skin, while all the other colours of lights are absorbed (soaked into) the tomato, so you don’t see them. That’s just as true of a blue book, which reflects only the blue part of sunlight but absorbs light of other colours. We tried to make white light with our experiment by spinning the colour wheel but had trouble spinning it fast enough to make the wheel look white. It did however blend all the colours together and the students had a lot of fun! colour wheel experiment

Winter birch trees – night and day scenes

Posted on September 24, 2015 by kerrieannebolongaita

Year 3 artists studied shadows during different times of the day and explored adding shadows to their winter landscapes. Some students chose to paint day scenes and others night. We looked at positive and negative space when using masking tape to make the trees. The tape acted as a resisting agent for the paint, leaving the trees white after adding a water colour wash. We added different sized salt crystals to the wet paint which added texture and variations in colour as the paint was drying. We then decided where to add shadows using diluted water colour paint depending on where we placed our sun or moon in our picture and finally added the details to the tree. I think these scenes are beautiful and serene. What a fabulous effort Year 3!

Mask making

Posted on September 24, 2015 by kerrieannebolongaita

Year 1 artists worked on designing an indigenous mask after exploring masks from all over the world. We looked at the different design elements such as line, colour, shape and texture and compared different styles of mask making from different indigenous groups. The design brief was to create their own mask using interesting lines and neutral or ‘earth’ colours. We added texture with felt and string. And they look amazing!!!

Bronwyn Bancroft inspired art

Posted on September 23, 2015 by kerrieannebolongaita

Year 3 artists completed a study on one of our Indigenous Artists, Bronwyn Bancroft and used their knowledge on her style to design a landscape scene. We studied drawing using perspective in landscapes in our previous unit of study so decided to add this element to our scene. Brownwyn Bancroft is notable for being amongst the first Australian fashion designers invited to show her work in Paris. She is a painter, illustrator and author and textile designer. Art work by Bancroft is held by the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. She has provided art work for more than 20 children’s books, including Stradbroke Dreaming by writer and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal, and books by artist and writer Sally Morgan. She has received design commissions, including one for the exterior of a sports centre in Sydney. http://bronwynbancroft.com/about-2/

Optical illusion tornados