Mrs Hull’s Young Apprentices

I’ve been posting some submissions from my school’s Art Department to TESS (Teaching Supplement), to feature in their Art Section. I couldn’t give up the chance of letting you see some of the pupil work my colleague, Mrs Hull (OLSP), has been supervising across the corridor. These submissions were pre-lim examples for the S4 Standard Grade expressive exam last year. Pupils usually sit the exam with objects in front of them, or a photo along with a pre-trial version of their exam composition. This gives them the biggest chance to succeed, as it is asking a lot for a pupil to be at their artistic best on the day. Lots of things can go wrong and the pupil could have artistic block or an ‘off day’.

At the very top Emma H and Patrick McC (S4, OLSP) show off their painting skills with beautiful studies of fruit, bottles and a basket. Mrs Hull’s still life resources are very luxurious, it makes the pupils’ work look a lot more mature, even professional. Her teaching methods help the pupils focus on capturing pockets of colour in an expressive, yet controlled manner. If you can observe and record the right reflections and perfect your eclipses in your work, like Holly McP‘s (S4, OLSP) pastel study below, you can produce impressive work, though this would be a lot easier if you have a great mentor like Mrs Hull.

“Cats The Way To Do It”

This is the last post before the Xmas/New Year’s break and I have a nice work in progress to show to you. Megan B (S4, OLSP) has been working toward her Prelim Standard Grade Exam piece. She’s actually just started her prelim exam above and is using her previous piece and the original photo as her resources to work from.

There’s still a lot of work to do before her actual exam, though I think she’s well on her way. The subject is interesting, her proportions are very good and she’s observing the light and shades really well. Just a little work on tonal exercises and a bit more colour mixing theory should have her confident and ready to sit her actual exam. An excellent piece to end the year on…

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year Everyone!

“There’s No Way That’s A Drawing”

This week’s artwork comes from Nadia B (S5) from Notredame High. This is her first sheet from her expressive unit. The pencil work is absolutely stunning, the photo does not do it justice. My favourite drawing has to be the egg in the egg cup. The tonal rendering is perfect. Nadia’s skill is evident in the way she can layer enough pencil marks on top on each other to merge them into looking like a solid firm object. Her skin looks like flesh, her surfaces look smooth and hard and her cloth looks soft and malleable. A truly stunning collection of drawings to end the week with.  Thanks Nadia.

Still Life… Still Important.

S3 (St Benedicts) have been working towards finishing their investigation sheet of their expressive intermediate exam. The investigation sheet requires pupils to draw analytical studies of their chosen area; still life.

Peppers are often used as an introduction to still life drawing. This is because the pepper is an interesting natural shape, it’s surface is shiny, it’s insides are filled with detail and crevices, it is colourful and varied. The Pepper is the perfect object to learn observations skills from.

Below Robert shows good use of contrast, he has a great personal style to his drawing, it is free and scribbled. It has character and with practice, Robert should be able to fine tune his scribbles to get a controlled, stylised style.

Above Antonia adds more detail and tone to her flower study. She uses cross-hatching to add darker tones, as well as hatching to the contours of the petals to give her drawing form and substance. While below Heather uses her clean and patient tonal skills to bring volume to her Pepper.

Below Robyn works her scratchy style into her pepper. It is such a great expressive style that will also be useful when using pastels or paints, her use of multiple lines to cover the surfaces of her objects helps draw the viewers eye into the object. It’s like staring into the framework of how the objects are made.

And finally, above, Edward uses a similar style to help raise his flat objects from the page. By shading along the contours of an object, you can help to show the viewer the form and dimensions of the object. It’s a simple trick, though it has helped Edward make his pepper more realistic and make his drawing more interesting to to look at.

Cowie & Banks Cheat Sheet

The last of our freebie resources, another cheat sheet for Cowie & Banks aimed at the expressive part of the intermediate exam. I know that a few of the pupils that read the blog will find this particular resource useful. As with the previous revision cards, things to take notice of are the inclusion of the date of birth in the painters’ names (86 for Cowie, 62 for Banks), the points to remember read as the phrases ‘Dad’s Comic’ and ‘Slick Poor’ and the artists’ life time-line can be remembered by a few simple points.

Download from the ‘Box’ (bottom right-hand column).

Tomorrow we will return to looking at pupil work. Thanks for all your interest in the resources this week and downloading over 400 copies from the ‘Box’.

It Would Impress Jimmy Choo

I’m still browsing through my old hard drive, cleaning it out and finding lots of beautiful artwork. This triptych comes from the talented hands of Gemma S, created in 2007-08. A beautiful intermediate expressive study of still life objects, mainly shoes. The final piece (lowest image) is absolutely extravagant, its success definitely helped with the contrasting black and white pattern background.

Worthy Of Goldsworthy

While on my third student placement at Notredame Secondary  I thought that it was time to try teaching outside the classroom. Not just in another room or hall, actually outside. Now most teachers won’t remember the ‘outside’, but hopefully some of you pupils out there will have seen it during your summer holidays.

I decided to get pupils to collect some leaves (I made twenty kits with gloves, a bag and rules on collecting) to start a Goldsworthy influenced unit. The leaves would be studied and drawn, then composed and collaged in the classroom to prepare for outside work. By involving the pupils in the task under classroom rules I was preparing them for similar work outside the classroom.

Pupils sketched their chosen leaf, traced and duplicated the sketch, then inked the drawing in black pen. The drawings were then cut out and composed on a sheet of green card. Pupils were allowed to swap and trade their leaves with other peers to build up a pattern of their choice. The pattern was then fixed with glue.

Pupils, now familiar with the idea of making a constructed pattern with natural objects,explored the technique with natural items in 3D in the classroom.

I split the classroom into five workstations; wood, petals, leaves, stone and water. At each workstation pupils would explore the material and try to build as many pieces of art in a ten minute block. Good examples were then photographed and discussed with the class on why they were successful. These ideas would then be used for inspiration when we took the project outside.

“Thank You For The Music”

Continuing with our look at great intermediate units. Rebekah M (S3) has worked extremely hard at getting her musically themed unit together. I really like how she has specifically chosen related media for each instrument. Soft instruments with soft materials, delicate sounding instruments in delicate styles etc.

Juggling your interests can be a hard thing to do. Sometimes one of them has to give, though throughout this year Rebekah and I have tried hard to keep her interests up and in continuous momentum. By relating her unit to her interest in music, Rebekah was able to enjoy her year a lot more and although she missed a few periods of art to music lessons, she was still driven enough to take her work with her and catch up in her spare time. It is for this reason (well that, and the fact that I really like these sheets) that Rebekah deserves ‘Artwork of the Week’.

Quality Over Quantity

Now that it’s hit the Summer Holidays a lot of you will probably not even be reading this anymore. You’ll be switched off from school and switched on to television, or dragged off to some foreign land. While you are all enjoying this very short time of being completely responsibility free, please remember those of you that are working. Like Katherine M, many S3 pupils will be trying to complete some of the work they didn’t get finished in normal class time due to their aim for quality and detail. Most units will fit into the time allowed, though a few will have many more hours of work needed to complete.

I do understand what’s going through the heads of those pupils, as I continually work through. I do not shut off. If you let things drift away from you, especially for seven weeks, you can become rusty and then it’s a challenge to get back to the same mind state you were before you started getting lazy. Here’s some advice for all the pupils that have work to complete over the summer.

1) Shorts frequent bursts, an hour every few days works best. Work completed in one long haul can sometimes look terrible after a few days… you won’t have noticed the drop in quality due to sitting down too long with the piece and it becomes too familiar.

2) Try and get the work completed earlier rather than later. The sooner you complete the work, the better you will feel having done it. Don’t leave it to the night before returning.

3) It is not a bad thing to be slow, but remember that the stress will be greater when aiming for the absolute best you can achieve. No artwork will ever be finished, you need to decide when you have had enough. Artwork morphs and changes, you could work on a piece for the rest of your life if you wished… but don’t.

4) Lighten the mood, art does not have to be completed on a dining room table in the dark while you’re feeling depressed. Listen to music, do it in the sun, while talking with friends. All you need is your materials and a sturdy surface (a piece of board or a tray might suffice), art should be enjoyable.

5) Don’t stress and rush your work to finish it… ‘all good things comes to those who wait’.

Jordan’s Head Revisited

After spending a whole year in S4 working on your Design Unit, the last thing that you probably want to do is go back and work on your Expressive unit from the year before. This is exactly what Jordan (S4) has done. You’d be surprised how quickly your artistic skills can develop and even a single year of development can make all the difference between a ‘good’ piece of work and a ‘great’ piece of work. Jordan worked lunchtimes and during after school support to change and add to his existing final piece. Adding an interesting Life Ring frame has not only hidden some poor background printing, it has made the piece more unique with more layering and media use.