Spotlight on Art: From Observational Drawing to Sculpture and Beyond

Building on the fine work done in Yr 6, the new Yr7 students blazed a trail during the first term in art and design. They have been exemplary in attitude, behaviour and in the quality of their work and already show that we have many fine artists within the group. It’s not too premature to say that we will potentially have a number of strong candidates to take IGCSE in a few short years.

The topic they have studied is called I am an Artist, and concentrates on consolidating and building on the skills of observational drawing, colour theory, painting, and artist research in order to prepare them for the more complex demands ahead. They have studied the Pointillist methods of Georges Seurat and the expressive use of colour in paint and cut-outs in the style of Henri Matisse. Introducing them to strong contextual sources from reliable resources is an essential and transferable study skill required in all subjects and disciplines.

Yr8 worked on a project called My City which introduces them to drawing in perspective and the skills needed by architects and interior designers amongst others and gets them thinking about the development of the urban environment. They studied the work of the Austrian artist and architect Friedrich Hunterwasser who began creating environmentally friendly designs as long ago as the 1950s in and around Vienna. Students are asked to consider the architectural and urban planning needs of their hometowns and to study some of the major historical and contemporary classics of world architecture.

Yr9 produced work combining the worlds of music and art through the synesthesia of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. This condition is caused by a different wiring of the senses in the brain and enabled him to see different colours when listening to music and helped forge the new abstract artworks pioneered in the 20th Century. The term is from the Ancient Greek syn, ‘together’, and aisthēsis, ‘sensation.’

Students also looked at American abstract artist, Frank Stella which enabled them to transfer their abstract 2D paintings into sculptures. The skills developed in this 3D project are being developed further in a stadium design scheme of work which is in itself inspired by the upcoming Afcon 2027 where, we hope, a new stadium will be built in Arusha. This will be the last project they do before choosing their IGCSE options later this term.

Yr10 IGCSE students have been working on a project called The Observed World, which aims to introduce them to a large number of artists and different working practices. It’s a little more front loaded and teacher led in the early stages in order to build confidence and quality in their work before they begin Component 1 proper which is the personal portfolio. As they move into Yr11, they will be expected to start creating work in a more individual way as they pursue their own interpretations of the new project titles, which is where our current Yr11 students are at and are now only a few weeks away from taking their final exam on the topic of Protect. I’ll be anxiously waiting to see what their final results will be.

Catherine Cox in Yr12 has had a very productive time and completed a range of powerful work in a unit on printmaking experimenting with collagraphs, gel plates, etching and more to create her own ‘zine design, and then moved on to the drawing challenges of the Bargue. Charles Bargue was a French, 19th Century artist who created a book of some 300 hundred highly detailed lithographs of classical Greek sculptures. At that time, this was considered to be an essential part of the artist’s tool kit as young artists were expected to have studied classical antiquity and understood the ideals of the Renaissance. Even some of the great modern artists including Seurat and Picasso studied from the Bargue before embarking on their revolutionary paths towards the innovations of 20th Century art.

Last but not least, our Yr13 are coming to the end of their time here and they are completing their A2 Pearson set assignment task on the subject of Light. By now, students are expected to work much more independently and set their own agenda within the design brief and come up with a personal, well researched response to the title. It is broken down into three activities: 60 hours of research, 15 hours to produce their final work, and then a further 15 hours where they will put together a website that will promote their ideas and make a selection of work from the research stage of the project. We wish them well on wherever their learning journey may take them next.

As for myself, I attended an IGCSE training session in Nairobi just before half-term, which was a great opportunity to meet other art teachers and learn from their experiences sharing ideas and resources. We intend to maintain contact and even visit each other’s schools as visiting artists and work with the students to help share best practice.

Article by Philip Parham