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