Painting “Spring Frost” by Elioth Gruner 1882 -1939

After wanting to do so for many years, I finally had the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery of NSW.  Above are some of the beautiful paintings which were on display. I have always liked the painting depicting a frosty morning in Spring. The pigeons reminded me of a visit to Trafalgar Square in London many years ago.The Gallery shop doorway was adorned with huge cardboard flowers. I hope we can decorate our Art Room doorway like that sometime. 

Wow, what a colourful lot of Op Art our talented Grade 6 students have created this year. My congratulations go to the students whose work is posted on our Blog and to all the other students whose brilliant work was displayed in our Art Room. I am extremely proud of you all. I believe that quality work takes time. Let’s see what happens next.

Congratulations to our Grade Six students who are putting a great effort into their Op Art pieces. “Worm Tunnels” seem to be the most popular, with many students painstakingly adding colours to their work.Their persistence is paying off as you can see. Their next challenge will be to create an original design.

Congratulations to our Grade 2 students who watched some YouTube videos on drawing animals with fur and then went on to try it themselves. I particularly like Emily’s ginger cat. He has such beautifully expressive eyes. Well done to Tahlisa who realised that the whole animal doesn’t to need to be drawn and to Anh who knows, from experience, that bunnies don’t mind being taken for a walk.

After last year’s Op Art success with Grade 6 students I wondered how the work of this year’s Grade 6 students would compare. We were inspired by this YouTube tutorial. I hope to have some great work to photograph today.

I was tempted to use “Cats Anonymouse” as the post title as I enjoy a play on words.These interesting collage cats were created by last year’s fabulous Grade 1 students. I am pleased to have them in Grade 2 art classes this year and look forward to encouraging their creativity and individuality. As I begin my 60th year in schools (I attended Muskerry East Primary School in country Victoria and Girton CEGGS in Bendigo  for my secondary education), my 43rd year of teaching and my 32nd teaching Visual Arts I am still passionate about teaching and learning. It is a great lifelong journey.

Our students bring some great work which they have done at home. Without the pressure of time at school students focus on their drawing etc. with stunning results. There is often quite a story behind the work. Zara said this was the first time she had used the fantastic markers she bought on a recent trip to Japan. While she was there she visited an Anime Museum. The embroidered felt teddy bear is by one of our most conscientious students who is a brilliant and quiet achiever. Congratulations to all three student artists.

I am extremely proud of the Grade 6 students who have shown their sewing skills and their individual design capabilities in the construction of these felt cushions. Congratulations to them all and I hope they keep them to show their children when they are in Grade 6, many years from now.

I am really pleased with the beautiful embroidered felt cushions hand sewn by our Grade 6 students.There was a great variety of colours and designs, some with applique and many with added beads. We had been talking about mandalas so the cushions are loosely based  on  those. They are small enough to be a pin cushion and just large enough to rest a head on on a car trip. Congratulations to all our wonderful students.

Our Grade 2 students were excited to see the dinosaur dioramas in the previous post and they were very keen to add that their clay dinosaurs had been fired at 1000 degrees Celsius.  We had very few legs etc. falling off the clay creatures this year which indicates developing modelling skills and bodes well for further Terra Cotta clay work in Grade 3 next year. Congratulations Grade 2.