Kilmarnock Academy BGE Art & Design Gallery

Last week at Kilmarnock Academy we celebrated interdisciplinary learning and innovation by participating in the national S.T.E.A.M. week event. S.T.E.A.M. stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths. This annual festival runs alongside British Science Week and celebrates the links between the subjects; creative thinking, innovation, conceptual imagining and the ability to think big and envisage changing the world for the better.

In Art & Design we challenged our pupils to come up with an innovative solution to a design brief that would change their own environment for the better; pupils were asked to come up with an idea that would encourage them to be outside at interval and lunch , where it is safer during Covid times.

The entries will be judged by the staff S.T.E.A.M. week team and a winner will be announced by next week. Here are a selection of the many inventive pupil entries we received.

It was back to core skill development for S1 & 2 this week with pupils using their observational skills to accurately draw all manner of organic objects from their homes or foraged from nature. Each pupil approached the task showing individuality through making personalised choices in the selection of their object and the materials they used.

During the lesson the classes discussed the nature of ‘organic’ stuff and thought globally about how the word organic is used- we explored what the word organic really means and how the word in organic is used in many different contexts; often as a ‘buzz word’ to sell products in the growing international ‘wellness’ industry.

This week we are showcasing the amazing work of our N5 & Higher Digital Media pupils.

Digital Media is offered from S2 onwards and the course gives pupils a chance to develop their creativity digitally – building websites, making films, animating and analysing digital content; skills so essential in today’s on-line world.

These talented pupils have created films exploring local history (Johnnie Walker), created promotional films for business and reimagined music videos for their favourite bands; including The Arctic Monkeys. Pupils have learned both film-making and animation skills in the process.

Can you guess who’s who? Last week the we assigned our talented S2 Art pupils the task of creating a portrait of one of the Art & Design teachers in our department. Pupils were asked to choose from a selection of teacher photographs and the results are just great!

Creating a good portrait is a lot about capturing the ‘essence’ of that person and we think the pupils did this remarkably well. Facial expressions and characteristics were displayed along with developed skills in proportion, tone and colour. Well done everyone.

We are so proud of our Digital Media photography stars who have created another selection of beautiful and thoughtful work.

Here is a selection of photography that sees pupils focus on micro-detail, combine textures and capture the landscape, seasons and world around them in innovative ways.

This weeks post see’s our talented S1 & 2 Art & Design pupils focus on the visual element of PATTERN to freehand draw patterns then turn their drawings into a T-shirt design by creating a simple cut-out template.

We are so pleased to see the pupils have integrated expressive mark making and tonal skills into their work. We have showcased both the T-shirts and some of the patterns alone as the intricacy and work that has gone into them is too good to miss. Well done everyone!

This week we are proud to show the fantastic photographic skills displayed by our S3 Digital Media pupils who are completing a 50 Photo Challenge from home.

Pupils have been given a list of words to interpret as visual images; encouraging them to think visually about text based descriptions and look more closely at their immediate environment and the world around them.

This week our S1 & 2 teams were tasked with developing their core drawing skills through practicing cylinders, elipses and tone. This task culminated in pupils drawing a cylindrical object of their choice from their own house. As you will see the results are fantastic.

Pupils were given personal choice in the materials they used to render their objects at the end. You will see that some chose paint, others pencil and some fine liner pen.

 

Our talented S2 Digital Media Photographers have been busy working on their ‘Photography Challenge’; documenting life in Lockdown while developing their compositional skills.

Each pupil has taken an individual approach to their work and, through their pictures, have expressed details of their own life and surroundings during this period away from school, friends and normality. On return to school this set of images will be collaged together as a document of this unusual time in the school’s history.

This weeks Miss Boyd’s talented S3 team of young artists utilised their skills in observational drawing; creating tone, understanding light and shade and judging proportion, through effective hand-eye co-ordination, to create these fantastic pencil drawings of crushed drinks cans.

Each pupil has a unique and personal style of drawing which is encouraged in the Killie Art Department where we value self-expression and nurture individual talent. Well done S3!