Emma D’s Machinature CD

Emma D (S3, OLSP) has been working hard to finish off her CD Booklet Design that she has created along with the rest of her classmates.

Each pupil had to draw, colour, scribble and paint four separate studies, as well as create two separate transparent prints and write a set of lyrics for a song.

The studies, based on the conflict between nature and machines focused on plants, cogs, circuitry and animal patterns.

Emma’s patterns are extremely neat and vivid, her pen work is interesting and dramatic and along with her fun and dynamic robot painting, she has created a wonderful CD booklet.

The process wasn’t just visual images, Emma and her class were asked to produce or customise a song/lyrics to feature in the booklet. Emma’s lyrics below are based around a song by Adele, though read as if they should be in a Radiohead album.

A beautiful booklet and a great object to keep and look back on in years to come, great work Emma.

Homies Collection 1

I have a nice varied selection of work to show you today, below is a great paint by numbers example by Megan P (S1, OLSP). I wouldn’t normally feature a paint by numbers as I prefer originally drawn work, though Megan has painted the canvas board really well, she’s also included glitter (which you can’t really see in the photo) and I’m a real sucker for glitter.

Nicole C (S1, OLSP) has provided the fun example of her name below. I really like the style of the lettering and the colours used. You can never have enough hearts or flames.

Murdo D (S2, OLSP) provides an insight into what he thinks school is like. Looks like a place filled with brain dead zombies, unable to talk, imprisoned in their own bodies. You should become a teacher Murdo… you don’t know the half of it… hehe

And finally for this set Alison C (S1,OLSP) has drawn these disturbing staring eyes. I’m not too sure if I should be freaked out as they seem to stare into my soul, or to be very upset as they look very sad, on the verge of crying.

Turtle Power

This week’s ‘artwork of the week’ comes from Fran (S3, OLSP). She has been working on her lighting windows for a few weeks now and has finally collected her hard work together into something that is close to being mounted onto her sheets. Her use of tissue and stenciling to portray a turtle’s skin and shell has been really successful. Fran created a light box out of card, tinfoil and Ikea battery powered lights to show off her designs.

Psykopaint

Pyskopaint is a great flash website that lets you upload your own photos and paint over the top of them in many different artist styles such as Munch, Renoir and Monet. I haven’t had much time with it yet, though the introduction and the samples have already blown me away. There’s also great tutorial videos to train you up too. If you give it a try and produce anything good from it, I’d love to see your efforts.

http://www.psykopaint.com/

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out…

This Artwork of the Week has been a long time coming. I think I overlooked it due to just being too busy and the works being created for YBAA were so good and plentiful that I didn’t get a chance to revisit it. Alison C‘s (S3, Duncanrig) work was such a simple a beautiful idea. The triptych work was based around prejudice and prejudice is formed from not knowing. We lack knowledge due to things being harder to see, hidden, in the dark. So, Alison turned the light on for us. It’s a really clever idea, an idea that the Equality and Human Rights Commission loved too, making it one of their top 100 shortlisted entries for YBAA.

Sorry this took me so long Alison, but it’s such a lovely piece, it was really worth waiting for.

House

This week’s Artwork of the Week is an incredibly strong image composed by Samantha-Jane L (Lochgilphead, S3). The image has been created for Argyll & Bute’s presentation at the Scottish Learning Festival. Samantha, along with sixteen other classmates have been involved in a series of digital workshops with me to create a Blurb book and some short films.

Samantha was able to conceive her idea very quickly, planning and prose was completed within ten minutes. She then proceeded to paint some resource materials along with photographing some of her classmates, to use in the Photoshop composition. Her final image is incredibly detailed and strong, mixing basic painting techniques with complex Photoshop selection techniques to arrive at this dramatic and thought provoking image below. Well done Samantha.

Scottish Graffiti

Gary M (S4) did not enjoy Intermediate Art, he was expecting an easier course and did not keep his interest and enthusiasm for the subject. After deciding that the course was not for him, he had a lot of spare time on his hands, so instead of wasting it, he decided that he would try and create works around his interest; Graffiti. He spent a lot of time making stencils and using paint and toothbrushes to simulate spray paint. He also brought in some drawings from home. These drawings were scanned and placed into photoshop to arrange them onto wall backgrounds. This method allows you to produce graffiti effects without actually having to damage property.

 

“Makes Me Wanna Scream”

S1 had so little time this year, it just seemed to zoom in far too quickly. As a teacher, you try extremely hard to squeeze as many units and techniques into the year, though when you have a class one period a week, it feels that you have achieved so little at the end of it. Saying that, I’m still proud of what we have done this year. We explored colour and the visual elements, we made posters for Anti-Bullying week, we created environmental skyline pictures, sent entries to the ‘Young Brits’ competition, designed a CD package, explored the work of Eric Carle and lastly; looked at Edvard Munch’s Scream and started to paint our own versions.

For those that did not want to have a photograph taken of them screaming, they were given a photo of my ugly mug, as the painting by David E above shows. Each pupil had the chance to pose a number of emotions, one was chosen and printed to make a Scream style painting. Pupils painted their own version of The Scream to explore the colours and the techniques used. They then had to adapt these styles and colours for their own painting.

Sarah above shows a natural skill of adding patches of light and dark next to each other to build up form. Sarah created a beautifully detailed drawing for this painting, though soon realised that she would not be able to keep all the detail as the brush is larger and more uncontrollable.

Kirsten C above paints from her own picture, she keeps her style simple and dynamic, though has started to highlight folds and flesh to make the portrait more realistic. It is a real shame that these pupils were unable to finish their paintings, though I am glad that they were able to experience the unit, because as I had told them, ‘this unit was not about the final piece, it was about the chance to experience painting and working from unique and personal resources’.

See-Through Me

Creeping into the Summer Holidays, I thought it was the perfect time to introduce you to Heather’s (S3) final piece for her expressive intermediate unit. Painted with powder block paints, Heather had spent a lot of classroom time (as well as lunch times and after school) to get this image ‘expressive and right’. The colours are similar to those used by artist Jenny Saville, though the style is much more impressionistic. Heather was not concerned with realistic or ‘correct’, the image was more about capturing a weird moment, a moment of self reflection or thought. The right eye gives us a sense of strangeness, something abstract, peering through the hand reminding us of Peek-a-boo games or hide and seek. An image that has been used quite regularly in Japanese cinema in films like ‘The Grudge’ or ‘Shutter’.

The background is printed with polystyrene tiles, the blue halo around the portrait bringing out the blue tints in the skin, reminding us of veins showing through. It makes us realise that our skin is see-through… we are transparent, we cannot hide behind make-up and clothes… nor behind our hands.

LumineSSSSssssence

Rachel A has been finalising her Design Unit for her Art & Design (Int 2) Qualification. A piece of lighting based on a Cobra, the light is aimed to illuminate an Info. Room at Edinburgh Zoo. Correctly themed and well constructed, the ‘snake light’ has been attracting lots of attention from pupils.

Rachel, along with a few of her classmates, has had to put a great deal of time and effort in to produce an outcome of this quality. Class time is simply not long enough to produce something of this standard. Rachel has attended Thursday night extra-curricular support classes since October, building structures, experimenting with the opacity of materials, paper manipulation, wire modelling, cutting and gluing, painting and  papier-mache.

It is for this very reason that Rachel deserves ‘Artwork of the Week’, well that, and the fact that this is a beautiful piece of sculpture too.