Art

Hey everyone! What a busy 5 weeks we’ve had in the Art room since our return from winter break! We used all the time we had to create art for the Auction. We are complete, the art created for the Auction was received with praise and joy, and now we are ready to move forward with the curriculum and explore new projects. I’m excited!

The focus on the past month was block printing, well, at least our expression of block printing.  Instead of carving on wood or rubber with cool, yet, sharp tools, we etched on foam boards for the same impression. 

The kids drew (with lots of pressure on the pencil) on the foam to then roll ink with a brayer unto the handmade stamp to transfer the image. We made many proofs and created awesome, one of a kind prints. I had the kids draw houses and buildings for our final projects and create a series of 4 masterpieces titled “our villages”. The kids created two day time and two night time pieces. The backgrounds were created with swipe techniques where the kids randomly put drops of paint on paper and used a hotel key to swipe the paint in many directions.  The girls experimented with warm colors and the boys with cool colors. The collaborative pieces of art were a huge success and some of my favorite art created for this auction.  

We managed to squeeze in a small lesson on pointillism,a technique of neo-impressionist painting using tiny dots, which become blended in the viewer's eye. It was developed by Georges Seurat “with the aim of producing a greater degree of luminosity and brilliance of color”.  The kids made sweet drawings of dandelions that have gone to seed and created the “puff of wishes” with small white dots created by dipping bamboo skewers in white paint.  

Next week at Orchard school we will celebrate the Chinese New Year, so in art class yesterday I led the class through a step by step lesson on drawing a dog.  After drawing with pencil, I had the kids go over their lines with black paint, in hopes of a Sumi-e impression.  We also discussed Hanko Seals, the way eastern artists “sign” their artwork. The kids created their own hanko stamp with red colored pencils for the final touch on their portraits! They came out great! 

By Rian

By Ezra

Gung Hay Fat Choy!!!!