Visual Art - Grade 12 (Wuhan)

My Life View - Grade 12 (Wuhan)

Planning and final

For this theme students were asked to look at Art as an avenue for exploring identity. They needed to create a work of art which tell us something about the world we live in. The students can connect with different views (social, environmental, emotional, political) from other artists in any Fine Arts sphere. Students are aware of an artist’s responsibility to educate others through visual response and visual representation. They needed to look at the context of the word perspective and how it has various meanings, i.e., meaning in art of perspective drawing, to the perspective of how people feel about something from their own point of view/ reference. After answering general questions about ‘life’ and ‘view’, they needed to combine these two concepts and explain visually who they are and what is their individual ‘Life View’.

Students completed a Diptych for the front covers of their Visual Journal. The front and back cover needs to be one continuous design leading to discussions about Diptych, Triptych and various compositions. They experimented with a variety of shape characteristics to create movement, balance, contrast, emphasis and/or a sense of space in drawings, paintings, print, collage, and appliqué. The final product was to be completed in mixed media.

Metamorphosis – Grade 12 (Wuhan)

This topic was to allow students to gain familiarity with multiple ways of representing and thinking through specific theme or concept with the emphasis on process over product. Accepting that things change and can be transformed from one ‘thing’ into another.

Students needed to look at two standard images (crumpled coke can or stapler) and decide how to transform them from one image into another in steps. In their Visual Journals they needed to complete planning for the morphing of the images recording the process. The final morphed creations are tonal drawings.

Tessellations - Grade 12 (Wuhan)

The students covered the work created by Escher, especially Tessellations. This allowed students to become aware that Mathematics and Art are interlinked and not opposing subjects and that accuracy and geometric structures are used in Art. Students discuss the process of tessellations by jotting down sketches, and drawings for creating their own in their Visual Journal.

They finished designs including positive and negative shape/ space designs and possible colours to be used. Students need to use their imagination to look at shapes and come up with a subject which will be able to be created in that shape. This is also linked to being able to repeat shapes accurately. To finish off striking colours were used to enhance the repetitive design.

Facial Features - Grade 12 (Wuhan)

As a precursor for Expressive Portraits students learnt about the proportion of the face and had to complete realistic tonal drawings of the facial features. The end-products were breath-taking and focused on drawing techniques and tonal contrast.

Expressive Portraits in process - Grade 12 (Wuhan)

The Theme Expressive Portraits was set to inspire the students to look at how art can be a form of rebellion (peaceful and passive) to communicate to people what is good, bad, wrong and what needs to be changed in society and/or the world. This allows the students to assess how other artists have created their own voice and the changes this has made to the society in which they live and in the greater scheme of things. They looked at the portraits from the old masters and compare them to the more contemporary artists and artworks as inspiration and influences of their final pieces.

Students are to complete in-depth reflective journaling, research, evidence of experimentation with a variety of media, risk-taking and an end-product ready to be displayed to the public. The role of the creative process and experimentation helps to realize a complex idea in one’s own art form through the creative cycle. The final art piece reflects the investigation into the varieties of expression, refine drawing skills and style, while making original images.

At the time of publishing this blog the students have not fully completed their drawings.