Thursday, May 1, 2014

April Arty Moments!

Something fishy going on in R2 !

Its been all go in the artroom as ever and the fabulous R2 Artistes have continued to exercise their fine motor skills by continuing their wire fish sculptures. 
These creations, modelled on Hong Kong fish have have enabled your children to learn a whole new set of skills including the joining and winding wire and pipe cleaners, intricate weaving of coloured pipe cleaners through small gaps, twisting, pinching and estimating length.



This required a huge amount of concentration and artclass was strangely quiet this last  week as people focused full attention on making sure that all fish were coloured thoroughly, all over fins and all!
The next step was to make sure Mr Fish could see his way round the ocean and so we gave him an eye, followed by his glinting and glittery scales that reflect the sunlight as he swims.




Weaving beads and bending wire into zig zags to hold the beads and stops them from all sliding together. Not quite finished yet, but looking good aren't they !!!!

The Grade One Designers

As a lead up the classroom unit about Islam, the grade one students have been introduced to the amazing architecture of mosques around the world. Looking for differences and similarities between mosques found as far apart as Morocco, India, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, students established common themes that were found all over the world including: The large domes, the tall and imposing minarets, the repeated doorways and archways, pointy windows, roof shapes and patterned decorations.

With all that in mind, we set out to design our very own Minaret......


As you can see people retained the great detail they had seen and this was reflected in their intricate Minaret designs, created in pencil and then traced in marker.
Next step involved coloured these, using inks and students were reminded how to utilise the lines to change colours in order to emphasis their details and designs.


As you can see the results are really quite stunning! 



 and despite starting from the same design brief, they are all completely different !!!

The stunning Grade Two Painters 

The "Character " canvases continue to progress and develop depicting a huge range of landscapes, and students are continuing to build their repertoire of painting techniques. Discussions are revisited each week around the topic of how can we help people who look at our painting realise what we are trying to show them....



Ask your children these questions:

How do we move beyond just colouring in?
How do we show that a mountain is 3D?
How do we show that the flat ground is coming closer to us?
How we show that sea is moving ?
How do we show that the sea is flat?
How do we show that a brown brushstroke depicts a piece of wood, or a tree trunk? 



How do you show that a planet is round?
What tricks can you use light and shade for ?
How do you change your arm movement when painting something smooth or a wild forest ?
How can you show the inside of a cave ?



As you can see there are many ways to respond to that question.......

Grade two students have learned that to be a painter, requires incredible patience and a great deal of problem solving. Its good to see both of these attributes building in your children as a wonderful foundation for all sorts of life skills!
We continue to complete these masterpieces...watch this space!

from 
your Art Teachers
Miss Flowers and Miss Kirk
xxxxx