During the morning session the lecturer outlined what was scheduled for the day as usual and gave us a task in pairs to complete. The task was to analyse a picture and consider what it means artistically. Below is a picture of the image I was tasked to analyse. I found this task difficult as I am very unfamiliar with deconstructing art and what it represents. However, it was an interesting challenge that I enjoyed more than I anticipated.

My analysis of this picture consisted of discovering that all the children on the hill were facing the same direction which I determined meant they were all moving forward in their lives where as the white shadows behind them represented their lives so far. On the back of the picture were some notes on what the pictures meant along with other thought provoking questions (see below).

During todays session of Art we studied a painting called “Windows in the West” by Avril Paton. This painting was very familiar to me as I had a picture of it at home but never knew what it was. I watched a video where she talks about the painting and how she painted it. Below is the video I watched and found it quite interesting. In particular I was surprised at the enormous amount of time it takes to create this painting being over 6 months.

Afterwards, I was given the opportunity to try printing. To do this a colour of paint either red or green was placed on a wooden mat before being rolled out evenly. Using a polystyrene sheet I had to create a shape from the “Windows in the West” painting and roll a colour over it. With this coloured sheet I placed it hard onto the paper for a successful print. I chose some straight windows and etched it into the sheet.

Using this sheet I rolled on green paint first and printed the sheet onto three separate pieces of paper. Upon repeating this process with the colour red and a sheet with bricks etched on as well I created my final version (see below).

The prints had varying success with the final version being by far the most successful. Through trial and error I was able to make my art more successful. This ideal can be perfectly administered during art where you instruct kids to take their time and move on from mistakes rather than feel bad about them. By placing the emphasis on the process rather than the result more enjoyment can be gained from the overall experience (Stipek et al., 2001).

 

Hallam, S. (2010) The power of music: Its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. International Journal of Music Education. Vol.28(3),pp.269–289. Available: http://moodle.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/715660/mod_resource/content/2/International%20Journal%20of%20Music%20Education-2010-Hallam-269-89.pdf. [Accessed 5 January 2017].

Stipek, D. (2001) Teachers’ beliefs and practices related to mathematics instruction. Teaching and Teacher Education.17(2), pp.213-226. Available: ScienceDirect. [Accessed 5 January 2017].