The Process of making an artwork

Working though a process to make a piece of art continued today.

After being exposed to local art works, photos and books about West Auckland history, the students sketched images that were of interest to them.
We talked about art telling a story. Many of the students are interested in how things have changes over the years and what to tell the story of this.

After the images had been drawn I got the students to draw a pattern using triangles, rectangles or circles. This design became the layout for displaying their images to tell the story.
Examples of the patterns






See the photos that show the process of drawing images then putting them into a composition. The composition is a ‘rough’ (sketch plan) of the final artwork. This is one students work and a good example of the work done by all the students.

The students were given a choice of medium to make their artwork. All have chosen painting. Next week we will start the creating process. Undoubtedly there will be many more skills they will have to learn as they begin to paint.

Artist Toolbox

The students are building an artist toolbox to draw on when doing artwork. The toolbox is a range of skills they are learning. We are continuing to build sketching skills with warm-up exercises each session.
The toolbox learning today was simple perspective drawing.
The students draw a block before we started as a before view. (see photo)

We discussed a painting where the vanishing points were obvious, I then demonstrated using 2 vanishing points to draw a box. They made a very good attempt at using the vanishing points for the first time. (see photo)

The next exercise was to create a drawing using vanishing points. This proved to be very challenging for the students. The result of this was the children deadly quiet from the intense concentration.

In our third session for the day the students started developing a composition telling a story about West Auckland. To do this they are following Bloom’s Taxonomy. The first part of ‘knowing’ the student drew images for old photos. As they started looking at the photos in books some of them began to form a story. It was interesting listening to the conversations.
Our next step will be the ‘understanding’, where the students will take objects in some of the draws and develop them.

Reflections for some student:

What inspired me today (the WOW!) …

“The perspective because it caused me to really think about what I was doing”. Sophie-Lee

“Was making the pictures alive and realistic”. Shari

“I made large, medium and small 3D shapes. It as so fun. I didn’t know I could do it, I’m so proud”. Courtney

“Surreal art. I understand what that kind of art is, when normal stuff is in an unusual place.” Jared

“Was doing 3D shapes. It caused me to really want to keep doing it and do it at home”. Courtney


What was the most important thing I learnt today?

"About surreal art because it’s cool to be creative and crazy.” Joey

"Perspective because I learnt how to make stuff look like 3D by just doing lines”. Salote

What did I find tricky?

“I found the shading tricky. I solved the problem by looking closer at what I was shading and saw the different tones.” Louisa