Art Education

Ms. Brenna’s Artists Alley

Welcome back to Ms. Brenna’s Artists Alley!  What a productive month we’ve had! This fall we are starting things off by learning about “Dyes, Inks, and Prints”.

The Grade 1/2 students have finished their lovely Hand/Arm/Fist and Fingerprint designs. They created everything from sharks, butterflies and spiders to trees, flowers and even cacti!   Beautiful work. These Handprint masterpieces are currently on display in the upstairs hallway and the on the art room gallery boards. They are now beginning to make plans for some Lego Prints! More on that next time. Meanwhile the grade 2/3’s have finished the first of their Relief prints. We have one more printing project to do with the relief printing boards they have created before we move on to some actual fruit and veggie prints!

Highlighted in this months Artist Alley are the grade 3 /4 students.  They have been working on their Cyanotype monoprints. These are a special kind of monoprints that use the sun to essentially take a blue and white “shadow photo” of objects placed on the cyanotype paper. To this end students have made an animal design and then found/created 3D objects to cover the areas they want to be white while leaving areas they wish to be blue uncovered. Unfortunately, we have not had a sunny day during our class time to make these solar prints. Hopefully that will change in the coming week or so. In the meantime, students ready for their cyanotype prints have been playing around with single colour painted monoprints exploring images from autumn and nature.

The grade 4/5’s have become scientists, and used foraged plants to create their own inks. Now they are working on drawing an image of the plant they harvested which they will paint using these natural pigments they have created. The grade 5/6’s are in the middle of the process of cutting out their stencils for the silk screen process. This can be tedious and mind bending work as students have to focus on positive/ negative space as well as on layering. I have been very impressed by everyone's patience and resilience as they work to cut out these tricky shapes.

With so many exciting things on the go, it is hard to believe how quickly this fall has flown by!   I hope everyone stays just as enthusiastic and focused as we continue to explore Dyes, Inks and Prints together.