Preps ~ The Dot

Preps enjoyed their first Art lesson by getting straight into painting! We read the wonderful book 'The Dot' by Peter H Reynolds (part of his Creatrilogy series) and experimented with coloured oil pastels and watercolour paints.

The students were amazed by the effects of the oil pastels resisting the paints and we talked about the Science behind this while we explored the results. Our Preps created some amazing dot paintings with patterns and lines as you can see below. Well done Preps!

2017 in the Art Room | Kelsey Montague

Welcome back to the Art Room Blog for 2017! We have so many fantastic Art activities happening this year and I can't wait to share them all with you.

Our new Preps have made a brilliant start and were painting like professionals during their very first lesson. Photos of their work will be posted soon.

Please don't forget Art Smocks for our lessons - some may be getting a bit small or tight, so may need to be replaced. We do have plenty of spares available in the meantime. An old t-shirt or button up shirt is perfect!

Our Grade 3-6 students began the year by learning about the street artist Kelsey Montague. Kelsey is an artist who is interested in exploring how public art, interactive art and social media intersect. She paints huge murals that specifically invite people into her piece, encouraging them to share their experience online.

You may have seen one of her murals in Australia (Bondi Beach, Melbourne Central, Byron Bay, Queen Victoria Market pop-up mural) or online through Instagram or Twitter.

We were inspired by Kelsey's hashtag #whatliftsyou and have been working on our own artworks to express what lifts/encourages each and every one of us. I will post photos of the artworks once completed and they will go on display up in the office. Students have been really inspired by Kelsey's work and come up with some really original and creative ideas. Until then, here are some more images of Kelsey's work.

2/3 ~ Pro Hart Dragonflies

"Oh Mr Hart, what a mess!" Yes, we watched the old stainmaster carpet TV ad and the students thought it was hilarious! We even watched the modern version, with Pro Hart's grandson Harry following in his footsteps.

The students loved learning about the unconventional techniques Pro Hart used to create his paintings, especially dropping paint onto a large canvas from a hot air balloon!! No, sorry kids, not really able to do that in our Art lessons, but we did have fun using a variety of different tools and techniques to create our own textured backgrounds.

We were inspired by his dragonfly paintings and once our backgrounds were dry, we painted our dragonflies in the foreground and added some highlights and contrast with chalk pastels.

What masterpieces! Well done Grade 2 and 3 students, they look amazing (and yes, what a mess we made!!)

One Million Stars installation at Realm and Eastland

I am so happy to let you all know that our beautiful woven stars (see this post) are now on display as part of installations at both Eastland and Realm.

Maroondah City Council registered to become a 'weave community' and promised to create 10,000 stars for the One Million Stars project. As a community, we managed to weave more than 24,000 stars!!

I hope you get a chance to admire the installations when visiting Realm and Eastland - they will be on display until the 19th January, 2017. Their next stop will be the Gold Coast for the Commonwealth Games.

The stars woven by Marlborough students were all created out of strips of recycled papers and magazines.

For more information on the project and star installations, you can visit the Maroondah City Council webpage here.

Here is a video clip that was played from the opening of the installation at Realm. You will notice Marlborough Primary School is thanked at the end of the video.

P/1 ~ Under the Sea

'There's a hole in the bottom of the sea, there's a hole in the bottom of the sea....'

We've had this song stuck in our head after watching the animated version of this book here. We've been sharing a lot of books based around the topic of Under the Sea actually. Here's a few of them...

We've had fun experimenting with printmaking using shells and a variety of marine life stamps and painted lots of underwater scenes. Students were particularly impressed with the effects salt and isopropyl drops produced on watercolour paints.

Here are some giant octopus paintings created by our prep students - some used bottle tops to print tentacles and represent bubbles.

Grade 1 students enjoyed constructing these porthole aquariums using paper plates, cellophane, beads and silver paints. They decorated the insides of their aquariums with paint, shells, wooden fish, patty pans, pom poms and pipe cleaners.

More of the students' amazing under the sea artwork is on display around the Art Room and will be coming home soon!

Grade 2/3 ~ Bronwyn Bancroft: Why I Love Australia

Why do you love Australia? This was one of the questions I posed to our 2/3 students, linking in with their classroom studies of  'Australia'. We read, admired and discussed the beautiful words and illustrations by indigenous artist Bronwyn Bancroft in her book 'Why I Love Australia.'

We talked about the varied Australian landscapes she illustrated and the way Bronwyn saw patterns, lines, shapes, colours and patterns in her environment. Students talked about an Australian landscape that was special to them, like the beach, the outback, a sporting ground etc and then chose a landscape to sketch. Once students were happy with their sketch, they drew their outlines with black oil pastels on a large piece of white paper. Lines and patterns were our main focus. Pan watercolours were then used to paint the landscapes.

We read a few more of Bronwyn Bancroft's books and particularly enjoyed the artwork in her book called 'Patterns of Australia'.

To finish off our paintings, some students chose to use cotton buds to add white dots to their artwork. I think you'll agree that they all look amazing! Well done 2/3 students!