Art – The Perfect Inquiry

This week we have been focusing on art as an inquiry.

Our Te Papa Tongarewa visit started the ball rolling. ‘Wow’ the artworks on display at the European Masters provided ‘exciting’ motivation for our art inquiry and the practical application that followed.

The students went on to ‘explore’ the artist and works of Philip Clairmont as a homework inquiry. We also looked carefully in class at his work titled ‘Scarred Couch’ (pictured top right)

We sketched the couch, discussed the style, looked closely at the lines, tones and textures used. We looked at the couch in Room 24 (pictured right, altered to exaggerate shadow), looked at where the light hit it, where the shadows appeared and the darkest areas.

Then the slow process of experimentation and production of our own artworks.

It took eight key lessons before we were on track to creating master pieces.

Lessons includes:

1. Transfer to A3, enlargement and proportions.
2. Shape and line work, building a foundation, a skeleton.
3. Creating emotion
4. Pastel skills, tone, blending, & technique
5. Light and dark.
6. Contrast, foreground and setting
7. Shadow and creation of 3D pillow effect.
8. Using black, shadow, definition, shape

Finished artwork will be displayed soon.