Senior Information Night Year 6

The current Australian Curriculum draft for the Arts is based on the assumption that all young
Australians are entitled to become engaged with  the Arts subjects and should be given an opportunity
to experience the special knowledge and skills base of each.
From the first year of secondary school (Year 7), students at CCPS will have an opportunity to
experience some Arts subjects in greater depth. The Visual Art curriculum at the school provides students with an extension of technical skills learnt from previous years combined with the continual nurturing of their creative development. Students will be guided through the process of developing their works further through the experimentation of various media while also allowing them the freedom to self express. They will be engage with the artistic, cultural and intellectual work of others but, most importantly understand and apply a variety of analytical and creative techniques to solve problems. The aim is to maximise their achievement in Visual Arts through the acquisition of additional knowledge, understanding, skills, values and attitudes.At CCPS Visual Arts places great value on the development of students’ intellectual and practical
autonomy, reflective action, critical judgement and understanding of the role of art in both current and historical society.
The following is an example of the work produced by our current year 7 students.
http://snack.to/fupi235p
The following link is to download the virtual art gallery, showcasing work from year 5 to year 6
http://ge.tt/2OQPAFL/v/0?c

Hiatus

Thank you to the few parents that have supported this blog. Currently I am taking time away from blogging about the works created by our talented students and am focusing on ways that this blog can become more productive as an interactive communication tool. The statistics so far have shown that only parents that are directly emailed have viewed the post related to their child's work and there has been a few international audiences. It is my aim to make this blog reach a target audience of the WHOLE school, including staff and for the number of post comments and  members to increase. The blog will resume in Term 3 with a renewed outlook and energy. Until then, if you are a regular reader please feel free to promote the existence of this blog. Let's celebrate the achievements of our young artists as a community.

Matisse, Merello and Still Life

Year 4 have been prolific with their artwork. They began the term by painting self portraits that represented a word beginning with their first name, such as Silly Sam and Amazing Amber. They then turned their skills to drawing from observations and painting in watercolours. Finally they combined their skills and knowledge to produce some self portraits influenced by the drawings of Matisse and the colourful works of contemporary Spanish  artist Merello. The following are the artworks we viewed and discussed.

Click on this link to view the complete flipbook of their portraits http://snack.to/fu30vs5p

Click on this link to view the complete flipbook of their still life watercolour http://snack.to/fznsof3c

Below is a sneak preview only.

Still Life With a Skull

STILL LIFE WITH A STEER’S SKULL, Pablo Picasso, April 5, 1942 

Still Life with Bull's Skull (Bulls Skull, Fruit, Pitcher), Pablo Picasso, 1939 
Oil on canvas 

This term Year 5 students were introduced to Picasso's Cubism works and they learnt a few interesting facts about him, such as having a super long name due to Spanish naming customs. Pablo Picasso was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. His  painting style changed many times throughout his career, and he produced a range of images, from classical figures to radical abstractions.  The Cubism art movement is a semi-abstract style that tries to express the artist's sense of structure by arranging on his canvas the geometrical  elements of shapes from objects in reality. Basically this means that the artist wanted to break down the image to a more simplified and basic shape with strong lineal/geometric representation. Year 5 were challenged to respond to Picasso's works by also attempting to draw their still life not as they saw it, but to break it down to geometric shapes or more simplified, while ensuring that their audience would still be able to identify what the still life objects were in real life. They also explored how Picasso painted directly onto  the canvas, mixing and blending in varied strokes and they also experimented with this technique in their own style using paint and oil pastels. They then developed their work further by adding collage. This work is still in progress and almost completed. Below are some images of completed works from the first stage. Please follow this link to view the works in full  http://snack.to/fztj2phv

Please note: Below is a preview and not the entire Flip book. You must click on the above link to view the flip book in its entirety from the Sharesnack website.

Treachery of Sanctuary by Chris Milk

One thing I love sharing with my students is a variety of artist's works. Thanks to this blog I can now expose them to so much more! The following work is an impressive example of how Art is developing to reflect our modern cultural experiences.

As part of the Creators Project, Technology and Art came together at Fort Mason in San Francisco. This amazing interactive work by  Chris Milk took visitors through three different experiences of flight. The series of 16-foot by 22-foot tall projections had visitors take centre stage; transforming their shadows with a succession of poetic gestures using motion sensing Kinects. The first panel saw the shadow decompose into a flock of birds, the second had birds swooping down to tear the shadow apart and the third transformed visitors into bird-like creatures with impressive-looking wings.

Gallery Exhibition Time

Year 8 have been developing their understanding of shading, value and colour while continuing to develop their skills in drawing from observation. We explored the works of  Georgia O'Keeffe, from her still life drawings to her flower paintings and developed 3 works, two of which focused on developing a more confident and controlled use of oil pastels.  Oil pastels are buttery in consistency and intense in their colour. They are slightly more difficult to blend than soft pastels and the students found this to be quite challenging when attempting to shade. However they persevered with great effort and the results were  pleasing, with all the students feeling very proud of their work. Below is a screen shot of their work which I have uploaded into the first virtual gallery exhibition for this year. This exhibition showcases their second work in which after having had the experience of using oil pastels they were then challenged to interpret and express their own flowers based on the work by O'Keeffe, presenting them close up as if seen through a magnifying lens.

You can download the gallery and view the exhibition by clicking on this link. http://www.sendspace.com/file/ix66jb 

This link will take you to my Sendspace page. Please click on the light blue button that says: Click here to start download from sendspace. After you have downloaded the gallery file (22.38MB) you will need to run it from your computer to view the exhibition. You may watch the exhibition on auto mode (default) or you can click F1 to take full control and wander around at your own pace using your mouse. Please feel free to comment on this post. The students would love to read your positive feedback. Enjoy!

An Exercise in Visual Problem Solving

Like Year 1JH  and Year 1/2KC, Year 2NB have also been focusing on line and how it can be used to create textures and shape forms. They created animal portraits using toy animals for their inspiration and viewed some portraits created by Matisse. The students were challenged to explore how they could use oil pastels to create textures and to think about the shape of their animal's head and features and how they could draw these forms using contour lines.

We discussed the elements of a portrait and what they had in common. We agreed that the face, neck and shoulders were the most prominent, using the entire page. The background in some of the portraits was also important and directly connected with the subject.

Some of our animals are in the jungle or outdoors in the garden while others are at the farm with fences. We talked about our animals and how their fur, feathers and scales would feel in real life. Mrs Hiskens then asked us how can we show the texture of the fur, feathers or scales? She showed us how oil pastels could also be smudged and then set us with the challenge of using only oil pastels to create our portraits. You can view all our animal portraits in our flip book  here http://snack.to/fup54mfn

Below is a sneak peek

An Obsession With Line

Year 1JH students have been exploring  line to create patterns, shape and form while also developing their spatial positioning in their drawings.
We began with reviewing what we knew about lines, drawings as many different lines and then painting the areas in and around our lines. Check the flip book Mrs Hiskens made of our line paintings.  Here is the link to view it in full http://snack.to/fz9f2c9t

Below is a sneak peek



We then progressed into exploring the contour lines (outlines) of objects and how they helped us see the shape of the object. In this case we used toy animals as our objects. We tried tracing them and drawing them from just looking at them. Mrs Hiskens then told us a funny story about some crazy farm animals.

Can you guess the story?

So we drew our own animal stack, trying to position and draw our animals so that our work used up the whole page.  We talked about our animal shapes and discussed the similarities in some animals and their special features.

 

 

 

 


This week Mrs Hiskens surprised us all with a special project influenced by the work of Keith Haring. We are now going to use what we have learnt about our animal shapes and lines to design our own plushie!
Here is the work of Keith Haring  that we looked at.

This one reminded us of a maze, Aboriginal paintings and an x- ray

 
We loved how he used outline to draw simple forms and how he has used lines to create patterns and show movement.


Here are some of our plans for our Keith Haring inspired plushies. Mrs Hiskens photocopied our work and then cut them out to use as templates on our fabric.

 

 






Keep an eye on this space so see our finished work.

The only way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas- Albert Einstein

When I first begin to plan for creative learning experiences, my main goal is for students to take ownership of the creative process. I don't believe in giving them formulas to follow because  this is no different to giving them a worksheet that does not allow them to think, problem solve, experiment and take risks. Taking risk is very important in the creative process, without it students have no way of knowing if their ideas will work or receive the instant feedback needed to develop  their skills. In short they will not have the opportunity to make mistakes from which to learn from. It is when there is a great combination of  teaching the knowledge, making mistakes and collaborative sharing of understandings that results in their work taking a life of its own with the children steering its direction. This is when I know great things are about to happen...

Year 1/2 KC began the year by exploring line (our main focus), colour, patterns and shapes. We looked at how these elements of art are found in many great paintings, we discussed how artist use them to make them work and the questions were raised... "how did the artist know that they needed those two colours? How did they know that they had to draw the line like that and not a different way?" I was almost blinded by all the thinking lights flashing, eager to try and explore these elements of art for themselves to find the answers.
(images to come...)

Equipped with the knowledge of lines, we then shifted our focus to 'seeing'. Seeing is an essential tool in developing creativity. It requires thoughtful examination allowing students to classify and make connections with their knowledge of lines and how they can be used to draw what we were looking at.
Now normally, this is when things begin to fall apart for some children. They get so caught up with wanting their drawings  to look the same as what they are looking at and become frustrated when what they see on their page does not match up and then the risk taking stops. This is when imagination comes to the rescue...

These lovely drawings are what happened when year 1/2 KC used their knowledge of lines, took the time to really look (at the bushland outside the art room) and used their imagination to include the possibilities of what we could not see under the ground.

It was from these idea-drawings that our project then began to take a life of its own with each student working collaboratively with each other, no arguments over who was doing what. Instead there was a shared understanding, shared ideas and a shared vision...

Stage 1 in the process-

                                                           Mural of  above the ground

                                                               and below the ground

Stage two- When the murals are finished students will begin to construct parts of  their under the ground ideas into 3D structures using recycled materials- cardboard, wood off cuts, colourful plastics, fabrics, pieces of metal, string, feathers etc.. We will then have a display of our wonderful mural with all of our fantastic creations giving our ideas a real life.

If you have any clean, safe and interesting recyclable object that you could donate to our project we would be over the moon! Please email me, comment here or just drop them off to our art room.

Where is the artwork?

Some of you may be wondering where all the artwork from last year has gone and why does this blog look different to the one from last year. Well... that is because I have changed blog hosts. The new blog will allow you to sign up and receive all updates instantly,via email.  The old blog  (khiskens.edublogs.org ) is still active and all of last years work can be found there with the exception of the virtual art galleries; unfortunately the links are no longer active. This year I will be continuing to upload the artwork into the virtual galleries and also, (fingers crossed), virtual flip-books.  I am so excited to be starting with a fresh new blog this year and I can't wait to share with you the creative journey we will be undertaking.

"My paintbrush is my childhood."

In the past three weeks I have been fortunate to shared in some amazing art experiences. The title of this post basically sums it up. As a teacher, these experiences are a constant reminder that children are powerful image makers. The desire to make sense of their world though their artwork communicates their ideas , thoughts, discoveries and feelings in a manner that words cannot describe or elaborate.

The highlights so far for 2012 range from a Year 2 student discovering that he can create grey, (as he guided his brush on his work, with great care and concentration, mixing white with black in swirls, fascinated with how the colours combined and changed before him), then proudly exclaiming " Mrs Hiskens I made grey!" to Year 5 students not even asking or reaching for erasers. Yes! finally understanding that every line we make is useful and necessary in guiding our drawing. Most importantly it is the discussions, about their artwork, that the students have with me or the ones I overhear among themselves that never cease to amaze me. The above quote comes from such a discussion, so simple yet so profound and straight from the mouth of a Year 3!