Underwater Christmas Parties!

Our final project for 2016, and a special farewell to our graduating Year 6 students, many who have been joining our classes since they were in their Prep year! We will miss you so much, but I know you will enjoy your adventures into secondary school... good luck and have a blast!!

The summer holidays are here at last, and what better way to cool off than a dip in the ocean? What might we find there.... a coral reef, teeming with marine life? Perhaps an underwater Christmas party?

We've completed our art with a free choice of mixed media options.

Have a wonderful Christmas break, and I look forward to seeing you all again in 2017 for another fantastic year of Gr8 Art Fun!!

A Day At The Beach...

With the summer holidays only a couple of weeks away, we're looking forward to fun at the beach, cooling dips in the ocean, the sand between our toes and no more school shoes!!
This project, inspired by Plastiquem, was completed over two days, painting and printing the ocean, creating shells and beach creatures and designing thongs, before bringing it all together with beach sand and collage! Aren't they spectacular?

Baby Turtle Sculptures

After successfully making their way to the waves, newly hatched marine turtles will not return to dry land more than 17 years, when they return as adults to the very same beach where they hatched, to lay their own clutch of eggs.

We hope you enjoy our baby turtles, hatched at last!

Texture Landscapes

After painting our clay baby sea turtles (we'll see them finished next week) we have some time to experiment with texture rubbing plates.

We've drawn our landscapes directly with black marker (no erasers!), layer upon layer, beginning with the foreground and working our way through the middle and backgrounds. We've finished with colour applied over texture plates to create a rich and decorative surface texture.

Emma

Flights of Fantasy!

Our art this week is inspired by the whimsical art of Juri Romanov.

We let our imaginations take flight with elephants, giraffes, whales and many other unlikely creatures enjoying a hot-air balloon ride! Our pictures are completed using pages from an old dictionary, colour sticks and soft pastel.

Juri Romanov

Laurel Burch 'Fantastic Felines'

Laurel Burch was an American artist and designer. She reproduced many of her designs to create functional art such as enameled metal jewelry and fabric. Her art is highly decorative and vividly coloured.  While her images include fish, horses, people, flowers, butterflies and birds, I especially enjoy her cat series 'Fantastic Felines.'

Aylah

Silberzweig Inspired Portraits

Our art this week is inspired by contemporary Canadian artist Sandra Silberzweig. I love her use of bold bright colour, pattern, line and shape.

Looking at her faces, we noticed similarities to Picasso during his Cubist period, and also to African masks. It is interesting that each side of the face has different patterns on the cheeks and around the eyes - perhaps this is a reflection of the different facets of her subject's personality.....

Our Silberzweig portraits are completed using colour sticks and watercolour pencil.

Libby

Terrific Baby Turtles

It's turtle season!

This is the magical time of year when the female loggerhead turtles, after  17 to 33 years of roaming the world's oceans, return to the very beach where they were hatched, to lay a clutch of their own eggs.

The eggs take about 80 days to mature before the tiny 4.5 cm hatchling turtles emerge, digging their way out of their sandy nest and scuttling down to the ocean to begin their life in ocean. They will never return to land again, unless it is to lay their own eggs, continuing the wonderful cycle of life!

Li

Brilliant in Black & White

This week we are looking at positive and negative space, pattern and contrast in these brilliant pen and ink drawings!


Pattern and detail at this level takes a lot of focus and concentration, and a number of artists who became very engrossed will be completing their masterpieces at home!

Everyone has put in a top effort on this project, and the results are just brilliant!

Pokeballs!

Pokemon is all the go at the moment, so we've really had some fun creating our Pokeballs!

After painting an interesting habitat inside our Pokeballs (constructed with painted paper bowls) we designed and created our Pokemon characters on cardboard, and made them free-standing with small stands made with heavy paper.

Some created much loved traditional Pokemons, while others used their imaginations to invent their own!

With only an hour and a half, time ran away from us! Many students took their left-over cardboard home to create decorations for their habitats.

Even partially complete, this project was incredibly popular with both the boys and the girls!

Nemo, Dory & Friends

Our ceramic fish sculptures started life as Nemo and Dory, inspired by the recent animated movies Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. However it didn't take long for  our creativity to kick in, and our sculptures quickly became so much more interesting!

Lion King

These wonderful lions are completed by children aged from Prep to Year 6.... 

Here we learn to appreciate the impact of light and shadow, facial structure and the patience of drawing each individual hair of a lion's mane.

What patience!

We complete the picture in the final few minutes of the class with watercolour pencil and celebrate grass and sky in all the colours of the rainbow!

Wash Your Hands!

Well it's that time of year again! Winter drawing to a close can only mean two things - the Ekka and flu season!!

Cartoon art, while often humorous, often conveys a serious message. 

This week we looked at images of germs, which are such interesting organisms - invisible to the naked eye, some can be so dangerous and others essential to our existence. Microscopic, yet often quite beautiful! We've 'designed' our own germs and added them to photos of ourselves to create a humorous but timely picture called 'Wash Your Hands!'

Pretty cool aren't they?

Olivia

Olympic Silhouettes

The Rio Olympics are in full swing, and we all seem to have our favourite sports to follow. Whether you love the swimming, track and field, karate, weightlifting or gymnastics ... the list seems endless, and there is something for everyone!

Our art this week is inspired by our favourite Olympic events. We started by creating silhouettes of action figures before filling the negative space around them with vibrant, blended oil pastel, constantly referring to our colour wheel to select analogous colours that blend well together.

Josh

Birds of Brazil (Getting in the mood for Rio!)

The opening ceremony for the Rio Olympics is coming up this weekend, and the excitement is starting to mount! To help us get into the swing of things, over the next few weeks we'll have a Brazilian theme to our art.... starting with these wonderful Toca Toucan and Macaw paintings.

We've used vibrant red, blue and yellow fluoro paint, applied and mixed directly on the painting surface, rather than on the palette, for a fresh spontaneous feel. Hello Brazil!

Dream Jars for the BFG

We love watching movies to inspire our art, and I've had quite a few requests from students for a project inspired by the recently released BFG, based on the book by Rohal Dahl.

After watching a trailer for the movie, we looked at some examples of Quentin Blake's illustrations for the original book. His illustrations are deceptively simple, using spontaneous line to create characters full of movement, fun and humour.

What fantastic inspiration for our art this week!

Quentin Blake illustration: Sophie and the BFG 

We started with illustrations of our dreams, capturing them into 'Dream Jars' for the BFG's collection. Some students accepted the challenge to try drawing in the style of Quentin Blake! Others added more detail to their art, while keeping large areas clear for our final bubble effects.

Our Dream Jars are finished with acrylic paint bubbles. Bubbles are so delicate and elusive - here one moment, gone the next, popping away when you try to hold on to them - just like our dreams!

Talia

The 'Eyes' Have It

We started with a simple shape - the shape of an eye.... and with a fine black pen, crayons and liquid watercolour, we let our imaginations run wild!

Aboriginal Dot Influenced Landscapes

This week we drew inspiration from the unique Australian Aboriginal Dot art to create our mixed media landscapes.

Emma

Shape, Pattern & Colour

Our art this week focuses on shape, pattern and beautiful colour using watercolour on diffusing paper and permanent marker on acetate. 
Every one is a winner - simply stunning!

Angry Birds in the Midnight Forest

In our last lesson we finished our 3-dimensional clay Angry Bird sculptures. 

This week we have considered the same subject (our Angry Birds) in 2 dimensions. 

We started with a guided drawing, creating a stylized forest floor. We then worked upward to our horizon, midnight sky and full moon, using thin and thick black pen, before adding areas of light and shadow with 2B pencil and adding our Angry Birds, created with pen and soft pastel.

Finally, we went back and added more and more detail to our midnight forests.... groves of mushrooms, lichen, a variety of grasses, pebbles and fallen leaves. Many added timid little nocturnal animals, hiding from the angry bird!

This activity required patience and attention to detail, and everyone has done a magnificent job!

Some students are going to add even more detail to their pictures at home!

Flocks of Angry Birds

Fired and furious! We hope you enjoy our flocks of Angry Birds!

Angry Birds spotted on the Sunshine Coast!!

Op Art Illusions

Op Art, or Optical Art, is an abstract style used by artists to create optical illusions. 
For example the surface of the canvas may appear to undulate, move, advance or recede.
This week we are having fun creating our own Op Art illusions.... 

Summer

Smudgy Pets

Our very cute pets are created with charcoal and soft pastel. 

We paid particular attention to where the pets are looking, to guide the viewers attention towards our center of interest so that our pictures 'tell a story'.

Glasshouse Landscapes (More Ted Harrison Inspirations)

Our landscapes are inspired by the wonderful paintings of Canadian artist Ted Harrison.

Looking at examples of his work, we discussed how this celebrated painter and book illustrator breaks his landscape down to simple shapes and lines, filling his canvas with blocks of brilliant colour to create decorative and emotive depictions of his beloved homeland.

What a wonderful inspiration for our art this week!
We've created our landscapes drawing inspiration from our own Glasshouse Mountains.

Summer

Australian Landscapes Inspired by Ted Harrison

Our Australian Landscapes are inspired by Canadian artist Ted Harrison.

Looking at examples of his work, we discussed his distinctive use of colour, shape and line to create decorative and emotive depictions of everyday life scenes in the Yukon.

Ted Harrison: Snowdog 1987

Venice Carnevale Masks

Venice is one of my all-time favourite cities (except during the peak tourist season and the flood season, when it's not so much fun!) Narrow cobblestone calles (lanes), canals and gondolas, magnificent architecture and art galleries - it really does have a magic only to be found in Venice!

The Venice Carnevale is held yearly before Lent, and is renowned around the word for it's elaborate costumes and masks. Go here to find out more about the history of Carnevale, and the traditional masks of Venice.

We've created our own Carnevale masks using a collage of coloured paper, feathers, curling ribbon and sequins, layering and decorating to make them as elaborate as we can. Mounted on our own photos, we can imagine we are there, experiencing the fun and romance of Carnevale!

Earth Day Inspired by Waterfalls in Plitvice, Croatia

April 22 is Earth Day!

We looked at some of the waterfall photos I took on a recent trip to Plitvice National Park in Croatia, noticing how the water is shaped by the rocks, constantly changing direction and gaining energy as it tumbles from the top to the bottom of the cascade.

Our backgrounds, inspired by the dynamic waterfalls, are created with watercolour resist, and we've finished with our interpretations of the diverse fauna of Plitvice, in soft pastel.

Ben

Last Night In The Garden .....

Last night in the garden... I saw some magical creatures!

As art students, we like to draw inspiration from a variety of sources - including cultural celebrations from around the world such as Chinese New Year, Earth Day and Japanese Children's Day, Christmas and Easter!

While we appreciate the special meaning of Easter, we are also enjoying the fun of the Easter Bunny!

Even our older artists are enjoying the fun of this very cute rabbit picture... and some have even morphed theirs into other creatures. We have foxes, birds, chickens, a ferret and even a unicorn!

We started with a guided drawing, as always looking for basic shapes to help us.
Using a simple egg shape for the head and tear-drop for the body, our rabbits have come alive with the magic of blended oil pastel, metal tooling and collage!

Fabulous Foil Reliefs

We used paper twine and cardboard to create semi-abstract relief collages before covering them with foil and then painting them with black tempera.

When the paint is dry we gently sponge the surface until our raised relief shines silver again. Finally we mounted them on brightly painted and patterned paper, a beautiful contrast!

Georgia

Bobble-Heads

Our clay Bobble-Heads are finished!

Painted with bright acrylic, each one has it's own 'personality'!

Monday Bobble-Heads

Op Art

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.

We've had some fun this week, creating a 3D optical illusion using nothing but a black pen and very carefully drawn lines. Each one is completely different... some have achieved a clearly defined 3D effect, while others intriguingly look as though they are emerging from flowing water. Even our 'happy accidents' look quite amazing! Our artists have done an great job with this challenging project, which required a lot of care and patience! 

Emma

More Mad Monkeys

What do you call a monkey with a wand? Hairy Potter!

We're celebrating the Chinese Year of the Monkey with mad monkey cartoons, and mad monkey jokes!!

Monkey Madness

With 2016 being the Chinese New Year, Year of the Monkey, we are celebrating with a guided drawing using B and 4B pencil with soft pastel. These 'how to' pencil drawings take concentration and patience, and I am always astounded at what our artists (many of whom are in lower Primary) are able to achieve!

Sophia

Dreaming with Chagall ...

Modernist artist Marc Chagall  grew up in Russia, later working in the US and France. His painting 'Paris Through the Window'(1913), symbolises his dream of living and painting in Paris.

Looking at this wonderful painting, we noticed Chagall's use of symbols, floating figures and expressionist use of colour. We talked about places we dream of visiting, before creating our art in watercolour or tempera resist.

Like Chagall, we have used a window to separate our inside 'now' place and our outside 'dream' place, with a figure (ourselves or a favourite animal) looking out of the window towards ourselves floating over our dream place.

Our pictures are lively, colourful and very imaginative!

Ethan

Warhol Inspired Endangered Animals

Our art this week is inspired by Andy Warhol's 'Endangered Species' series, looking especially at his use of colour to evoke feelings about his subjects.

We're using black marker and layered oil pastel on digitally manipulated photos of wild animals, thoughtfully selecting our colours for emotional impact, before adding a final layer of black oil pastel. It is exciting to see our animals re-emerge as we scratch the black away.

Happy New Art Year!

We're celebrating the start of a new art year with an explosion of fireworks!

Many of us saw the new Peanuts movie over the holidays, and we started the lesson with an amusing short clip from the movie for inspiration. We looked at the basic shapes of the main Peanuts characters, and discovered that the same shapes can be used to draw all of the characters with individualisation of the hair and clothes.

Many students chose to create cartoon self portraits of themselves as Peanuts characters!