3/4 ~ Music and Art

'Creative Composers' linked perfectly with Art this term for the Grade 3/4s. Students learned about Cubism and Picassso's Three Musicians painting.

 

They also investigated Picasso's painting called 'Violin and Grapes' and made their own cubist-style guitar collages.

To finish off our unit, students explored the work of Paul Klee and how music influenced a lot of his artwork. Here are their paintings, inspired by Klee's Castle and Sun artwork.

Grade 3/4 ~ Clay Birds

I think you are going to love these exotic birds, hand crafted from clay by our Grade 3 and 4 students. Each and every one with its own unique personality and style. Gorgeous!

3-4 ~ Puppet Making

Did you know that 'Muppet' is a mix of words, made from the words Marionette and Puppet? We learned this while investigating different types of Puppets and their origins. In class, we watched some videos of a very talented Puppeteer, named Scott Land. His Marionettes are amazing, but his puppetry skills were even better.

Could Grade 3 and 4 students construct their own Marionette using recycled and various construction materials available from the Art Room? You bet they could!!

It was tricky tying on those strings, but we were very patient. A lot of students had to refine their original plans (all part of being an artist) and some of us re-designed ours into hand-held puppets. In the end, they are all so unique and you all worked so hard to create them! Well done Grade 3 and 4 students.

3/4 ~ Van Gogh inspired sunflowers

One of our favourite Van Gogh paintings we studied had to be Sunflowers. Grade 3/4 students created their own sunflower artworks with a twist. Vincent's favourite colour was yellow, but we mixed it up a little with our warm and cool colour palettes.

Whole School - Vincent Van Gogh

Celebrating the current exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, students across all grades have been investigating the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. Students were so engaged during our lessons, enjoying short videos and stories about Vincent as well as viewing a variety of his famous artworks. It has been so rewarding to hear students talk about his artworks (texture, movement, vivid colours) and recognising some of his works (Starry Night, Wheatfield with Cypresses, Sunflowers).

Our Prep-2 students enjoyed creating beautiful sunflowers for a collaborative display. They used oil pastels to draw, colour and blend their sunflowers and showed great persistence when cutting them out!

The 3/4 students have studied in detail some of Van Gogh's landscape paintings, particularly focusing on Wheatfield with Crows. Using oil pastels, students created their own wheatfield, experimenting with textured marks and perspective.

Our senior students were inspired by Van Gogh's chair and created their own 'pop-up version. Using fineliners and pencils/markers students drew their chairs during a guided drawing session. Patterns were created for the floors and the wall was decorated. After a bit of tricky manipulation with extra paper and making slits in parts of the chair, the final artworks were complete!

Stay tuned for some more photos of Van Gogh inspired artworks from our students.

3/4 ~ Emily Carr and Ted Harrison landscapes

To complement the 3/4's topic of geography, we have been learning about landscape artworks and how artists use space and perspective in their compositions. Throughout our lessons, the students have shown they have a very good understanding of the foreground, middleground and background in artworks. Here are some flash cards I made for our word wall.

Emily Carr was a Canadian artist (and also an Art teacher!) who loved the northern forests of Canada so much that she painted them to preserve them for all to see. Like Van Gogh, Emily painted skies that seemed to move - even her trees looked like they were swaying in the wind.

We discussed how to create a sense of depth by drawing/painting larger tree trunks so that they appeared closer (foreground) and smaller trees that look further away in the background. The students did a fantastic job of this with their Emily Carr inspired artworks!

Next, we investigated the amazing work of Ted Harrison. We shared the book 'A Brush Full of Colour', which was all about Ted, his life and his art. We were fascinated by the fact that Ted grew up in a coal mining town in England, which was very dark and gloomy. We wondered if this was why he loved to use so much colour in his artwork - because there wasn't much of it around when he was a child. Ted travelled to many parts of the world but fell in love with Canada and the Yukon territories. Oh and he was also an Art teacher!! Here is one of his colourful artworks that we were inspired by.

Students used coloured oil pastels to draw their landscapes, layers and swirls. They then used liquid tempera paint to fill in each area. Once the paint was dry, students reworked their coloured pastel lines to make their work really pop.

And here are some of the wonderful creations Grade 3/4 students made. Stunning!