Students were offered tasks in class from a wide range of art disciplines including ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and textiles. Students were also given the opportunity to engage with and respond to a variety of artworks from contemporary and historical contexts from around the globe.

This year, for the first time, Pre-primary joined in in art classes. Students were introduced to artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Paul Klee. With a wide range of themes and materials they created artworks including a tiger’s head using collage, a self-portrait in crayon and dye-based paint, a wind chime in air dry clay and a soft toy using fabric and fabric crayon.

Mixed media projects challenged the Year 5 and 6 students in Semester 1, starting off with drawing tigers for Chinese New Year/Year of the Tiger. Rather than the usual lead pencil on white paper, students had to change their thinking and familiarity by working with white water colour pencil on black paper. They concentrated on the tone and texture of the animal’s fur and stripes. When their realistic drawings were finished, they worked back into them with watercolour paint. The colour enhanced and completed the tigers.

Their next main project, a self-portrait, was inspired by the mixed media artist Teesha Moore. Students investigated the meanings of colour and chose a colour which said something about them and their personality. Using paint and collage they created a textured border and background. To this they added their photographic image and text of a quote which held meaning for them and finished it off with pattern and embellishment.

Year 4 students also drew tigers in the first weeks of Term 1, before moving onto tasks aimed at improving their knowledge, understanding and application of the Elements of Art. Their final artwork for the semester was a painted cityscape or a Minecraft inspired building showing their understanding of simple one point perspective.

The Year 2s and 3s created a paint and collage jungle scene. They learnt about layering to create depth and space within a landscape as well as mixing tints and shades. Their painting skills were also utilised in their next project, a self-portrait inspired by the artist Modigliani. They also learnt about proportions of the face and how the artist, Modigliani, played with these proportions, distorting their own images in the same style.

Working with the self-portrait theme, the students also made themselves as a superhero doll. This project involved the students brainstorming what their superhero origin story would be and what powers they would get. We looked at the most common colours for superheros and super villains and discussed why these colours were used. After designing an appropriate costume and painting their design onto fabric, it was sewn together, and stuffed to finish off the 3D soft sculpture.

All classes did ceramics in Semester 2. The Year 5 and 6 students created an animal tripod, Pre-Columbian (Aztec), chocolate pot. This involved a lot of problem solving, design work and ceramic hand building techniques. Teaming up with Science, the Year 4 and 5 students in TA9 also investigated animals. This cross curricular project had them designing a unique animal made up of specialised adaptations they explored in science. These animals were then hand built as a clay sculpture.

The Year 4 students in TA8 created a group ceramic piece for the library based on an aerial photo and maps of the Kingsley suburb. Working as a group was vitally important for this project as pieces were interconnected. This will be mounted and installed next year.

The Year 1s completed the last round of fish pebbles for the ‘Only One You’ fairy garden river installation. This was the culmination of 5 years of work collating approximately 10 classes of Pre-primary, Year 1 and Year 2 students’ work.

Currently we have another ceramic artwork being created by students for the Bushtucker Garden near the undercover area. Border stones have been made with impressions of the bushtucker plants in them and finished with the colours of the aboriginal flag and earthy tones. This project is on schedule to be finished and installed late next year.