Whalsay School

Art & Design

Teacher: Miss G Rainey

By the end of S4, students will have completed two wide ranging units of work:

Expressive unit of work (painting, drawing, developing compositions and studying the lives and work of artists who produced similar work)

Design unit of work (researching a brief, developing concepts, exploring materials and studying the lives and work of designers who designed similar items)

The type of work covered in each unit varies from year to year and Expressive work will usually centre on Still life or portrait painting.  Design work usually centres on Product, graphic or ceramic Design.

In S3 you will continue to:

develop and improve your art skills

research and investigate the work of other artists and designers and their motivation for doing so.

In S4 you will:

Complete two units of work at Access 3, National 4 or National 5. The coursework for each level is identical, so all students work on the same topics through the year. Each unit is combined with a linked written art & design study in the form of an illustrated essay. Each unit will last for approximately 15 weeks.

The practical units are developed in three stages:

Research into the topic – Development of Ideas – Produce Final outcome

All students work individually, but the whole class works on the same unit, on the same topic, at the same time, following strict deadlines.

Pupils from Whalsay have art lessons with the art teacher from primary one till secondary two. Then they make choices of what courses to follow for their final two years at the school.

Pupils in secondary three/four can either choose to take a two year Nationals course or a number of 40 minute short courses.

Primary one and two are visited by the art teacher in their own classrooms. Primaries three, four, five, six and seven have art in the spare classroom in the primary building which is used for knitting, music, art and by groups from primaries three, four and five. Primary visit the secondary building to have art in the art room.

All the primary art lessons last 40 minutes except for primary six and seven who have 40 minutes each one week and then alternatively miss art or have 80 minutes of art in a three week cycle.

Secondary one and two have 40 minute and 80 minute classes each week in the art room.

National classes have three 50 minute classes each week in the art room.

Click here to see examples of our pupils’ artwork

Resources

The secondary art room has two pottery wheels and a darkroom for black and white photography. The primary building has the spare room for art and has its own electric kiln.

Drawing is important

Drawing is a skill that helps all kinds of work done in art. Drawing is something that can be learned and improved with practice. Focusing on different aspects of drawing like tone or shape or colour or pattern each time you draw can help improve your work. Drawing from observation, or looking closely at something , is best for improving your skills. Drawing from real things and not from photographs is better still. The most important thing is just to draw regularly.

Here are some of the pages from a drawing book of my own. The kind of things I chose to draw were just round about at the time, or just nearby. These drawings are all concentrating on line , shape and tone.

Art and Design

Art and design is offered as a two year National course.

The two year course has four units of work. Two expressive units that allow pupils to learn techniques and develop work in drawing, painting, sculpture and printing. Two design units that allow pupils to research a design problem and create design solutions.

Each expressive and design unit has some reading and writing that goes along with the practical work, and four short essays about artists or design topics to write over the two year course.

Assessment is continuous and the award at the end of the course is taken from :

A formal expressive five hour exam

A design project done in class

One essay on design and one essay on art.

Homework is an essential part of the course.

National art and design – Design activity

Since the introduction of the course for art & design in the late eighties design work has been an assessable part of art for secondary three and four pupils taking the two year course. The more recently introduced 5-14 art and design guidelines for art teaching from infancy to secondary one and two has design work as part of the progressive coursework.

What makes design work different to expressive work ?

Expressive work is where the choice of what the pupils makes and how they make it is up to the pupil. So for example if someone likes painting and is interested in fishing boats they might choose to paint a picture working from photographs of boats they have gathered. It’s their own choice, they are expressing themselves.

Design work is where the pupils choice of what they do is limited by a design brief. A design brief tells the pupil what they must do, but not how they should do it. The three examples here were from a brief which told pupils :

Design a phonic display for use in an infant classroom. The display must be attractive to young children. The display must have words on labels which can be taken on and off the display. The words must be able to be read clearly from a distance. Use of texture should be considered for the display.

Pupils designing to a brief work through several stages. First they must research the brief, then they must consider a number of ways of making whatever the brief is asking them to make. They choose what they think is their best design and make it. Finally they write a short evaluation of their finished design. They should also evaluate the earlier stages of the work. Did they fully understand the brief ? Did they do enough research ? Did they consider enough ways of making the thing they were being asked to make ? As well as : How well did the final piece of work turn out ?

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