Using Templates to Support in Visual Art - AS91914

 When you are starting a new page in a sketchbook, there is nothing worse than sitting looking at a blank piece of paper. 

To help with this, I made the students some templates on paper to work on their two artist models. I photocopied the templates onto wet strength cartridge paper we i knew we were going to be painting and printing and doing collage work as part of the media experiments.

This is the template for the Henri Rousseau work - link to document

Here is the student work produced from using this template. The students cut out the media experiments and presented them into their sketchbooks.

This is the Margaret Aull template that we used. I put instructions for different media to be used on this one. Link to the document

Here is the student work produced from using this template. The students cut out the media experiments and presented them into their sketchbooks.

We are now onto thinking about our own work and we are using the work from AS91912 - link to blog post. and the influence of one of the artist models that we have looked at.

 I do not want the students to be put off by suddenly having a big blank piece of paper staring at them so I have made a template for them for this step too - link to document

This presentation is from my sketchbook and shows how we can cut up this template to arrange into our sketchbooks the same as before. I am really enjoying seeing how individual the students are making their sketchbooks with how they are laying them out. I am looking forward to seeing their ideas about their own piece of work and reading their notes about what their ideas are about.

Reading in Visual Art - Understanding the Artists Interpretation

 Our second artist model in Year 11 Visual Art this year is Margaret Aull. We are doing a similar process to when we looked at Henri Rousseau earlier in the year - blog post here - where I am getting the students to fill in a worksheet using a variety of media looking at the artists' work. The reading for the first artist model was an activity practising scanning and predicting - blog post here

The planning for the artist model work is on the class website - Henri Rousseau - Margaret Aull

The reading for Margaret Aull was of a very different style. We were reading her written piece that goes along with her painting " Fiji, Ever Fiji". This work, both the writing and the painting, was Margaret Aull's response to the coup and violence that was happening in Fiji at the time.

The first thing that we did as a class was to watch a YouTube video of the trouble and we had a class discussion about what a coup is and what the violence was about.

I gave the students a big version of the painting and a photocopy of the artist's words. Mr Milford, our literacy specialist, had taken a copy of the work away with him to work on a strategy for the students to understand what was being said. Here are his planning notes.

The students read through the work at the same time as I was reading it out to them - Link to document

We had the students highlight everywhere there was a "noun group" so they could highlight and see where these things were and we could talk about what each one meant. They then highlighted all the action words / verbs in green so they could relate those to what as being said.

We were referring back to the large poster that i have on my classroom wall that has all of these elements highlighted. Link to poster here.

What we are doing with this work now is putting it into our sketchbooks with our media experiments of Margaret Aull work. We had already done a bigger copy when we were practising mixing colours  - blog post here, so we are taking a double page up in our sketchbooks to be able to fit everything in, especially the large piece of written work.

With my example that I always make for the students, I didnt like the clean page so I put painted sections on it before sticking the work down and then splattered paint across everything afterwards.

Here is a picture of Mr Milford working with the students, going over the written work, while I highlighted the words on the screen as we went over them.

I found this a much harder reading activity to do with the students as it was dealing with thoughts and feelings and reactions to events where the normal reading that I do with my students is around facts - materials and processes, dates of things happening etc.

Year 11 Visual Art First Standard

 We are now working on the second standard in Year 11 Visual Art and there has been a recent final flurry of activity to get the first standard done so the grades can be included on the reports which are due at the end of this week. There is nothing like the looming knowledge of parents / care givers knowing how you have been doing to inspire a bit of work completion. 

This standard was AS91912 - Link to the class site and planning here.

Planning for Visual Art AS91914

 My Year 11 Visual Art students have worked through their first internal standard and are now onto working on the external they are entered into, AS91914 - Explore Visual Arts processes and conventions to inform own art making.

We have been enjoying the experimental aspects of this standard. The first thing that we did was to try out the new gel plates  - link to blog post here.

We then started looking at the first of the two artist models we are using this year, Henri Rousseau. I am using this as a way to experiments with different media with the students. They have not had much experience of different art media so I made a worksheet where they looked at Rousseau's work and used a selection of different media to copy sections of it.

Link to document

The students have been doing some reading about Henri Rousseau - Link to blog post here , and they had to use this information to answer a series of questions and add this information into their sketchbook presentation. Here is the link to class site page with the Rousseau information, instructions and questions.

As usual, I always do an example alongside the students. Here is my sketchbook page so I can show them what I want them to do. We are only using 1 page for this work as we can only use 8 pages for this standard as a whole. I wanted them to. cut up the worksheet and present the Rousseau information and media experiments in a visually attractive way.

Next week, we have out Careers expo, so I have been photographing the student work to make an exhibition for visitors to the expo to look at. For part of that, I have made two posters of the student's Rousseau work. One of all the tigers that they drew and one of the different media that they have used. I have made these posters A1 sized so they look really good and you can see the student work clearly.

Link to media document

Link to Tigers document

Our next step is to go through tis same process with out end art ist model, Margaret Aull - link to site page

The students will then use the information collected from the first standard - link to site page - with the style of one the the artist models and produce a piece of work of their own design.

Reading in Visual Art - Scanning and Predicting

 It has got to the point in my Year 11 Visual Art class where we have to start reading about our artist models so information about them can be included in our sketchbooks.

The first artist we have been looking at is Henri Rousseau. We have been looking at his work in terms of experimenting with different media to do copies of sections of the work. 

We started our reading today. In my inquiry last year, I spent a lot of time looking at how to do information transfer with my classes. Marc Milford, our literacy specialist, is keen for students to learn how to scan and predict. He took a text I had found online and made me an example of how to do this. Link to document here I felt a little overwhelmed by the size and content in this document so I had a go at making a lighter one to use today. Link to document

After showing this document to Marc before the lesson today, he felt that it still needed some work so he came to the lesson with an addition to it as I had not included any work on scanning. Link to document

When we started the reading, we had our guest reader from last year, Ms George. The students had to read along and use the table on the document to record any words that they did not understand.

After the reading we talked about those words and we looked up the meanings together and discussed them.

The students then re read the the document and underlined the key words from Marc's document as they read.

Reading for Identification in DVC

 My Year 11 DVC class are currently starting their seating designs. They have already looked at their design influence (the has to look at either Frank Gehry, Frank Lloyd Wright or Antoni Gaudi - Link to planning here ). They now have to think about their second design influence, which has to be Māori inspired. We looked at Matariki as a starting point for this influence and I gave them this presentation to start them off on their research.

After they had done their general reading, they had to decide on one star in the Matariki cluster and find the story of that star / character. This story was to be copied and pasted onto a Google doc and then they had to read it and highlight where something was mentioned that they could then find as an image.

They then had to find images to go with the story and put it all on the same doc ready for printing.

This is my example.

After their document was printed out, the students had to cut everything out and arrange it on a page in the sketchbooks.

We kept the highlighted areas on the written sections as it made clear the parts of the story that they were focusing on.

From here, the students have been drawing the images from their research. I think that drawing the images and not just using them to look at for inspiration, gives a greater insight into the shapes and forms as you are making stronger connections in the brain by physically working with them.

What we are on with now is design development. The students have their initial sketches based on the design elements of their chosen designer. They now have to take those initial ideas and use the drawings from their Matariki stories to inspire how the development goes.

Mono Printing with Gel Plates

 I have been watching videos on how to use gel plates for printing for a while now and I have bought myself some gel plates to play with at home. I have been enjoying my experiments and wanted my Year 11 Visual Art class to use this skill / technique on their work this year.

I have set up some videos for the class to watch on the class website - link here

I showed them a couple of techniques at the beginning of the week and we had a go.

These are some photos of the students from this first session.

Here are some of their prints from this first session - link to presentation here

We then watched some of the videos in the class and I sent them to them to watch at home.

At the beginning of the next lesson, we went for a quick trip down the creek to collect things that we can press into the gel plates.

I also had a go at cutting some texture mats out on the laser cutter for the students to use. We tried them in thin card to start with but they fell apart while we used them. Cutting them out of EVA foam sheet worked really well.

Here are some photographs of the work from this second session - link to presentation here

Artist Model - Margaret Aull

The Year 11 Visual Art class are doing focussed work on their first artist model. A New Zealand artist called Margaret Aull. Link to the class site. 

Link to Visual Art on Instagram

They have been doing copies of her work, where their focus was on mixing the paint colours to match as we only have primary colours and black and white so they have to mix all their own colours.

They then had to come up with a piece of work of their own which shows it was inspired by how Margaret Aull works.

Here are my examples. I do these alongside them so we all work on it together. Link to document

Here are some of the students copies of Margaret Aull work. Link to document




Here are some of their own work that has been inspired by Margaret Aull. Link to document