Lost in Our Art

When I start drawing, hours can slip by without my noticing.... I get lost in my art!

For our last lesson of the year what could be better than a picture celebrating the holidays, and all the time we'll have to lose ourselves in activities we really enjoy!

This week we've used black marker and oil pastel, combining flowing lines, geometric shapes, pattern and wild colour, with a design focus on contrast and balance.

If you look closely you'll be able to find us, lost in our art :)

Happy holidays, and I'll see you next year for more fabulous art fun!!!

Seanna

Animal Groups....

Groups of animals are often known by a 'collective noun' - a pack of dogs, a murder of crows, a litter of kittens, a swarm of bees, a herd of reindeer.

According to the Australian Koala Foundation there is no collective noun for Koalas because they are quite solitary creatures that don't move around as a group. But we can do better than that!

My favourite is A Cuddle of Koalas... what do you think?

A 'Cuddle' of Koalas?

Our pictures this week are of animal groups, with a focus on repetition, tone and value, using 4B pencil and colour sticks. Our finished pictures include koalas, reindeer, elves (and even flowers!) We made up our own collective names if we didn't know the correct ones (because we are creative and we can), and I love them all!

Do the Haka

'Kapa haka is the term for Maori performing arts and literally means to form a line (kapa) and dance (haka). Kapa haka is an avenue for Maori people to express and showcase their heritage and cultural Polynesian identity through song and dance.

Battle haka were originally performed by warriors to proclaim their strength with much vigorous movement, foot stamping and facial expression.

Haka are also performed for many other reasons including welcoming distinguished guests, acknowledging great achievements, and special occasions such as weddings and funerals. Kapa haka performance groups are very common in schools.' (Wikipedia)

After watching a short video clip and looking at some traditional polynesian face tattooing and tiki masks, we created our version of the fantastical facial expressions that often accompanies the haka with a focus on line, symmetry and balance. 

Eli

Ritzy Rizzi Cityscapes

James Rizzi was a New York City pop artist. His zany, animated cartoon style, featuring animated buildings, rich detail and bright colours has a huge following. He became known for creating his art on any 3D surface he could find including an airplane, buildings and cars.

'The Happy Rizzi House', Braunschweig, Germany

We've created our Ritzy Rizzi inspired cityscapes with bright liquid watercolours. Enjoy!!

Zara

Hand Sculptures

We all 'talk' with our hands, some more than others!

This week we looked at messages we commonly send without words, using our hands to communicate by gesture. After looking at a number of widely recognised hand gestures (with a brief discussion about what might or might not be appropriate, and what accidents might sadly befall an inappropriate sculpture on it's journey to the kiln!) we created our clay hand sculptures.

Can you read our messages?

Ruby

Tetrahedron Sculptures-In-The-Round

We started this project with a discussion about sculpture-in-the-round, looking at the way it can be viewed from multiple viewpoints, and should therefore be interesting from every possible angle.

Marbled Moons

Some fabulously detailed drawings have emerged during this project, I am so impressed!!

Julianna

Thinking Outside The Box

A short activity to round out the last 15 minutes, and this fun little exercise in creative thinking fits the bill perfectly. I love doing these quick, challenging activities with the children - you can almost see their brains ticking over ....

Midnight Owls on a Marbled Moon

Did anyone see the recent 'blood moon' lunar eclipse?

A blood moon can only occur when the sun, Earth
and moon are perfectly aligned, with the Earth in the middle.

There is something quite beautiful about the red moon, isn't there?

We've created our 'blood moons' from paper we first marbled with shaving cream and watercolour.

Some of the children chose red, yellow and orange, to recreate the blood moon colours, while others went with turquoise, blue and purple for an eerily different 'blue moon' effect.

Shae

We finished with black marker line drawings using fine and ultra-fine permanent markers. With lots of detail, pattern and variation in line, they provide a beautiful counter-balance to the softly swirling colours of our moons.

A Little Bit Surreal ...

Finlae: 'A dragon skating on a jet plane.'

The Surrealists were a group of artists who were interested in depicting the world of dreams, nightmares and imagination. Surrealist artists such as Salvidor Dali and Rene Magritte painted familiar, everyday objects in unexpected and impossible ways, the way things appear in dreams.

Kate & Zara's Ocean Collage

So proud of Kate and Zara!

The girls are in year 6, and graduating to High School next year. They approached me last term, wanting to develop and deliver their own lesson. Of course I agreed, and I know they have been working hard on their concept ever since.

So today is the Big Day! and the girls have presented a lovely under ocean collage picture for the class. We started with a wet-on-wet watercolour wash, textured with salt, while the bottom half of the page became the sandy sea bed with glue and beach sand.

From there we developed a variety of shells and sea creatures using a wide choice of materials including corrugated cardboard, tissue paper, construction paper, cartridge paper and oil pastels.

Thank you Zara and Kate, for a well thought out project, with lots of opportunity for individual creative interpretation, yet nicely structured to ensure a successful result from everyone!

Hollie

Robots & Donuts (Inspired by Eric Joyner)

Eric Joyner is an amazing contemporary American artist who has developed a running theme of Robots and Donuts in his art. 

Eric Joyner 'Robot R & R'

The juxtaposition of these unlikely elements, handled in an otherwise realistic manner, is quite surreal. 

After admiring several examples of his work, we set out to create our own 'Robots and Donuts' pieces using black marker and watercolour pencil.

Chelsea

Beautiful Bubbles

A bit of fun this week creating a bubbly background for our underwater creatures.

This is a technique that could be used very effectively to make beautiful paper for a variety of uses including torn-paper collage, scrap-booking or simply as an interesting textured background, as we have used it in this project.

After looking at some beautiful jellyfish inspiration pictures many children chose a jellyfish theme, while others elected to draw other sea creatures. We  blew bubbles in a strong solution of watercolour and dish liquid before capturing them on the paper. Messy, but loads of fun and very effective!

We finished with soft pastel, blurring and blending the pastel inwards to maintain the transparency of our jellyfish. Many of the children blurred their oil pastel outwards instead, creating a wonderful 'glow' around their creatures.

Beautiful!

Indi

Falling .... Just Fooling!

Our last lesson of the term, and we've been busy experimenting with more optical illusions.

Kate

Op Art (or Optical Art) uses line, contrast and often very precise mathematical composition to 'trick' the eye so that the viewer perceives different visual effects such as movement, warping, swelling or even hidden images.

What Do You See?

Zoe

This week we've ventured into the world of optical illusion. Our inspiration is the famous 'Rubin Vase' illusion, published in 1915 by psychologist Edgar Rubin.

Fantastic Foil Figures

I love the children's action figures which they crafted with aluminium foil over a pipe-cleaner armature. We have dancers, gymnasts, super heroes and basketball players ...... even a few mermaids!

This is a very challenging project, and the children have all done so well. Mounted onto a metallic oil-pastel background, our foil action figures are so expressive, and look fantastic!

Ruby's 'Mermaid on a Rock'

Cup-Cake Crazy

Our finished ceramic cupcakes ...

We used moulds and pinch pots to construct these functional ceramic cupcake boxes, which are a 3D extension of our Pop Art Cake pictures from earlier this term, influenced by Pop artist Wayne Thiebaud.

The drying and firing process takes a few weeks, but the finished results are amazing, and well worth the wait!!

Sofia

Minecraft Mania

This project is definitely a winner! When I asked who knew Minecraft every hand shot up!!

For those of us less familiar, Minecraft is a computer game that is all about placing and breaking blocks. It involves adventure, battling scary things, visiting interesting lands and a whole lot more. Above all, the children love it, which makes it an excellent source of inspiration for our art this week.

Although I had a 'plan', the children were very keen to develop their own ideas, so we went with that! Who am I to stand in the way of such enthusiasm?

We built our pictures within a grid base to help us with placing our blocks and which also helped us to create pixelated backgrounds, then added colour with soft pastel.

Bryson

Ants At Home

A simple but very effective black marker drawing, imagining what the Ants might get up to after a hard day's work!

We've paid particular attention to using a variety of line type and scale to create interesting pattern in the negative spaces between the ant house rooms.

I am always so impressed with my students' imagination, which you can see when you look closely at the details!

Lilly

Finished Relief Collages ....

Can't let a good collograph go to waste, so after painting them black we sponged on some metallic paint for a faux-metal effect.

Textured Relief Collages

This week we've created low relief owls (and a multitude of other creatures) using cardboard, with an emphasis on interesting shapes and textures. These are not ordinary collages, which are an end in themselves, but collographs, created as a plate for printmaking.

Our first project with our collograph creations is to take prints with crayon rubbings.

I love the way the children have thought carefully about balancing their compositions and colour combinations, choosing their mount paper to compliment the colours they used in the rubbings.

Ruby

Pop Art Cakes - Mmmmm

The Pop Art movement of the mid 1950s challenged traditional attitudes about art by taking images from popular culture such as advertising, comics and other aspects of everyday life, isolating and elevating them to the status of fine art.

We all love cake, so after looking at some classic Wayne Thiebaud paintings, we created some Pop Art cakes of our own! They look good enough to eat!!

Ruth

Theibaud Inspired Pop Art Cakes

Pop Art cakes, inspired by Wayne Theibaud, using colour sticks on black and white paper for a very dramatic effect!!

Ella Bree

Design Your Dragon

Our first picture for Term 3 is inspired by the movie 'How to Train Your Dragon 2', which many of the children saw over the school holidays.

One of the great things about this movie is that each dragon is an individual and looks completely different to all the other dragons. What a great inspiration for some creative drawing!

We prepared our backgrounds with washable felt pen spritzed with water, before designing our dragons and finishing them off with scratched oil pastel for great dragon textured skin.

Hayden B

Fabulous Koi Fish

Koi fish are decorative varieties of the common carp. They were first bred for their decorative colours more than a thousand years ago, in China. Koi fish are very popular in both China and Japan, where they are kept in outdoor ponds and water gardens.

Koi grow up to 90cm in length and can live more than 30 years. It is also very strong, and can jump with its entire body out of the water. It often appears in art works surrounded by a big splash!

In China they believe that the koi fish brings good luck and symbolize strength. 

The Japanese associate koi with perseverance in adversity and strength of purpose. Because of its strength and determination to overcome obstacles, it stands for courage and the ability to attain high goals. The name 'koi' also sounds like another word that means "love", so the koi is also often used to symbolise love and friendship.

Many artworks also have cherry blossoms that haven fallen into the water. They are also a symbol of love.

Aren't these fabulous? Have a wonderful holiday, and see you next term!!

Yasodha D

Fabulous Koi

All beautiful - I think one of my favourite projects so far!

Annika VW

Chinese Cherry Blossoms

In Chinese (and Japanese) art, animals are often used to represent aspects of life. If you know the meaning of an animal symbol you can read the 'hidden' meaning within the painting.

For example, the dragon is the symbol of great power and the best possible fortune, a bat can be symbolic of wishes for good luck, happiness and long life and a duck in reeds is a wish for good luck in exams.

Visit this website to learn more about Chinese animal symbolism.

We looked at a number of animals and their symbolic meanings before choosing the animals for our own pictures. Some children used the Chinese zodiac animals from the year they were born.

I also gave the children a strip of paper with their name written phonetically in Chinese characters, which they included in their designs.

To complete these beautiful Chinese influenced pictures we created a soft pastel background and added cherry blossoms with acrylic paint.

Bryson C

Chinese Symbolism & Cherry Blossoms

With eight separate steps, these pictures were quite complex to put together. I love the soft pastel skies, that take on a twilight atmosphere with the silvery white moons peeping out from behind the cherry blossoms. The animals too, are very diverse as everyone chose their animals to symbolise a hidden message within their picture. Well done everyone!!

Oscar N

Manga Karate

Manga is the art of Japanese cartooning and comics. It seems that there is a form of Manga for everyone in Japan - it is read by people from every age group and in all walks of life, and covers just about every genre from science fiction and fantasy to murder mystery!

The Manga style is becoming increasingly known and popular in countries outside of Japan - when we looked at some examples the children all seemed to recognise with the style even when they were not familiar with the name.

This week we've had fun experimenting with the exaggerated eyes, small triangular nose, pointed chin and shaped hair that is characteristic of Manga.

Juliana K

Fun With Japanese Art ~ Suminagashi & Sumi-e

Suminagashi, which literally translates as "floating ink", is a Japanese form of paper marbling.

Sumi-e, or "ink painting", is an Asian style of painting which has been practised for well over a thousand years in many Asian countries including China and Japan. The Sumi-e artist strives to capture the essence of an object or scene in the fewest possible brush strokes.

This week we've experimented with both Sumi-e and Suminagashi to create our own Japanese influenced pictures.

Sophia S

Panda Love

I've just returned from a fantastic trip to China and Japan, and to celebrate this week we are creating our own panda pictures. These have to be one of the most photogenic creatures - they are just so adorable!!

Chook Sculptures

Cartooning Dogs

Soft Pastel Chooks

Ruby D

"Tiger Tiger Burning Bright ......"

Jessica C

'For The Birds' Cartooning

Lachlan F

Abstract Skies & Y-Trees

Beautiful semi-abstract landscapes in acrylic paint.

Ella P

Black & White....

Positive-Negative drawings, exploring how effective black and white can be.

Ella H

Clay Bears Fired and Finished!

Our clay bears are fired and ready to be painted!

The Winter Olympics were happening when we created them, so in our original plan they were polar bears (for they Olympic mascot bear). Now that it's time to finish them, many of the kids have chosen to paint their bears as Pandas instead. Either way they are very cute little bears!

Ruby S

Stacked Folk-Art Animals in Soft Pastel

I love the way our Stacked Folk-Art Animals turned out - the contrast between the animals and the patterned black background is so effective...

Talia D

Indian Temple Elephants

After looking at pictures of Indian Temple Elephants, and some elephant pictures from my Indian Adventure a couple of years ago, we used fluoro oil pastel and black watercolour pencil spritzed with water to create our own version. Elephants seem so exotic and mysterious, they are a great source of inspiration!

Semi-Abstract Bikes

We used viewfinders on photos of bikes to select our perfect semi-abstract compositions, then had great fun painting them with our brand new liquid watercolours... Love the bright colours!!

Scarlet C

Clay Bears

This week we've created bear sculptures in clay, after the Polar Bear mascot of the Sochi Winter Olympics. Our little bears are very cute, and we're really looking forward to painting them in a few weeks time after they've been bisque fired!

Back Yard Spotlighting

I love these shadow creations, inspired by a night walk in the park at Cotton Tree, where I saw possums, bats and lots of other wild life. 

Abby K

Chinese New Year ~ Celebrating The Year of The Horse

Our first creative art work of 2014 celebrates the Year of the Horse on the Chinese Lunar Calendar.