This week, in our visual art input, we looked at the technique of printing. We briefly spoke about the history of printing and how it made books more accessible to everyone because previously, the only widely available book was the bible. We then looked at an artist called Bob and Roberta Smith who used printing to create powerful pieces about art and art education. This helped, for me, to highlight a link between visual arts and literacy. It showed that you can use literacy to create statements and then use different art techniques to create an eye-catching poster, card, display, etc. We then had a go at creating our own printed pieces, which was really fun. We firstly had to create a statement about an area that we feel very passionate about. I personally choose the topic of mental health and used the statement ‘ Love Yourself No Matter What’ We then had to draw it out and trace it onto polystyrene tiles. We then painted the tiles using brightly coloured paints and hoped that our print would work. Unfortunately, my print was unsuccessful but that’s okay in art. If something doesn’t work out the way you planned, you can try again maybe with different materials or using a different technique. You might not get the result you wanted but it might still be okay.
Our music input looked at rhythm and patterns this week. We began by talking about musical notation and what a variety of different notes stand for. However, we also talked about how it is okay if you don’t use conventional notations and instead use shapes, colours or figures. We used shapes to begin with and I found this easier and a lot more straight forward then trying to understand the music notes right from the start. We also learned about the difference between pulse and rhythm. Whilst a pulse is regular, like a heartbeat, a rhythm can be a mixture of long and short beats. Once we had went over the basics, we got a chance to have a go at playing some music. We all got a set of either drumsticks or beaters and we were to play along with the music on the screen. I found this really fun and thought that this was really engaging way to learn music. Music was never a subject that I enjoyed or thought that I was particularly good at but I actually really enjoyed this input and didn’t feel stressed out or anxious like I normally did during music lessons in school.
