Visual Art

Hi Zoe

This week brought home some hard truths, especially for me personally. Personally I wasn't fantastic at Art (although I loved it). I can remember always saying “I can’t do it” or “my drawings never look good.” After working in a school I have realised that you don’t have to be a great artist to participate in art and create something you are proud of.

I really enjoyed this week as I believe visual art is really exciting and can be implemented in a range of ways. In the reading by Speck (1989) it states that the primary Art curriculum is a non-essential area of learning. I disagree with this, as I believe Art can enhance many other areas of the curriculum. I think Art will enhance confidence, growth, and creativity and can also contribute to understanding a concept. Children put their heart and soul into their art work so it is important to appreciate the effort taken by your students (Boone, (2008).

The colour wheel clip I found interesting and I already know students who would benefit from this, the bonus is they get to eat their biscuits after the lesson.

I completed the blind contour drawing lesson and I found it quiet amusing. I completed two and my partner Matt did one. Matt was very good at his attempt, I got better on the second time around. I think this is a great tool to encourage students to have a go, as the outcome doesn't matter. It is a good way to build confidence amongst the classroom. I think this would be a great introduction lesson.
 

Leah

I felt a bit sad when I read that you never considered yourself to be great at art, Leah. Art was one of my favourite subjects at school, but I do remember how competitive the art classroom was and I never really enjoyed displaying my work. Probably because as Boone (2008) suggests exhibiting work can be traumatic because of a fear of being criticised.

Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Circles

Portraiture was my least favourite subject matter too and I can understand Skophammer’s (2009) point about giving self portraits a theme to make the subject matter less personal. Body image and confidence can be a big obstacle. Perhaps a more abstract way to approach explorations of the self could be through thumbprint portraits or by creating a split face and collaging over one half of the face to create inferred meaning.

Another activity I encountered this week was Phillips (2013) emotive faces which are based on Kandinsky’s Squares with Concentric Circles (1913). Students explore facial expressions and the colours which represent these expressions. The activity connects well with the personal and social general capability. 


  I also explored the cross curriculum priority of sustainability by looking at how waste materials could be used to create art. One idea was that students could make collages out of bottle caps, but upon reflection I have thought it would be better for meaning making to allow older students to collect their own waste materials over time and not to be too proscriptive about how the art evolves. Some interesting examples of recycled art can be found on Non-trashyRecycled Trash Art. 

Zoe

I have added a topic "recycled art" to the tool-kit as I made these this week with a prep/1 class. It was fitting with what you were discussing about recycling materials for art. The students created under the sea creatures by using old CD's. They looked fantastic. 

   

Here are some pictures of the finished product.

Leah

They do look fantastic. Have you got them hanging up so they can catch the light?
 

Dahlsen's Southbank

I have just found two resources which intrigue me and I thought I would share. The first is an Australian artist, John Dahlsen who is making environmental assemblage art similar in concept to the bottle cap collages and the second is a video of artwork made from natural materials students have found in their school yard.

6th Grade Andy Godlsworthy Project   
Retrieved from Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HnrKiHqNvA

Zoe