Currently, in the Art Room:
The grade 2/3’s are an enthusiastic bunch I have to keep up with – and they seem to celebrate anything I throw at them. Just gotta stay one step ahead!
The grade 4/5’s have been looking at those wonderful works by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers of central Australia. How fun! They have each chosen an animal/bird/reptile indigenous to our area – the Niagara region – and have done preparatory sketches. They are just beginning to built their animal armatures. Soon, they will begin to wrap their sculptures with scraps of fabric, yarn and string. Colour – and not in any way you would see it in the wild.
The grade 6’s have been exploring blind contour drawing, and learning to make close observations of what they see. We are taking it to the next level and rendering one of their self portrait drawings to a wire copy. Hmmm … bending that wire and keeping it down is proving to be a little tricky.
The other grade 5/6 class is about to begin pen and ink landscapes next week, and we shall see how that goes – NOT my area of expertise ( though I do rather like to write with a fountain pen or two).
One grade 7/8 class has been learning techniques of shading using pencils – watch for that post. They are about to begin a more personalized project: drawing a simple photographic collage they put together with photos from home. After that, I am thinking some clay would be great …
The other grade 7/8 class is stringing their looms and just beginning to weave their personally designed wampum belts. They learned a little about the Iroquois and other nations’ use and examples of these earlier in the year, along with their studies of indigenous culture in Social Studies. We are using pony beads, so I am hopeful this one won’t drag out too long for them.
