Art Alive Immersion Week.

Since Art Alive is our topic for this term, we had an immersion week. We switched classes and learnt about different artists. Every artist had a different style of ways to paint. We had to go to the art lessons straight after morning tea.

Our first class was with Mrs Nua in room 22 on Tuesday. Vincent Van Gogh was the fabulous artist we were studying. His life was dreary especially towards the end. One of the reasons why he was so miserable was he sent his ear lobe to his girlfriend but she didn’t like it. Also, when he was painting he only sold one piece of art in his whole life. His sister in law was the one that made his paintings worthwhile because she really put his artwork out there, and eventually his artwork became famous and valuable. You could see some of his emotions in his paintings. He used vertical strokes throughout the whole painting. Mrs Nua showed us a painting of sunflowers that he did. Then she zoomed in on one particular flower. We had to show her that we could do this technique by copying the flower and creating something similar.  

  In room 18  Mr Barks talked about Picasso.  Picasso never just drew a face from the front perspective but he drew from the side, the middle and sometimes he would stand over his subject and sketch from the top. The background of his painting looked like shattered glass painted in dark colours. For our Picasso picture, we had to draw a face but half was from the side view and the other half was from the front view. My picture looked a bit weird because  the ears were in a different place. I’m not used to drawing like this. In the end my picture looked a bit weird but I think that Picasso would like it.

  On Friday Mr Slade was talking about Claude Monet. He was one of the founders of French impressionist painting. Mr Slade showed us some pictures and the technique that he used. Throughout his painting he used little vertical strokes to display his art. We could paint anything as long as we used his technique. I drew a mountain that had a little stream running down it. It had a little pond in the corner as well. I think that his paintings and technique are very original.

This week on Monday we went to our last class. We were learning about Daniella Hulmes with Ms Squires. She was born in Elsloo, in the province of Limburg, Holland. She came to New Zealand and married a Samoan man. Thats why she painted pacific paintings and used bright and vibrant colours. One thing I noticed was that all of the girls had the same face and hair. Ms Squires did a close up on a fruit bowl. The grapes had a 3D effect because she shaded the grapes in as well as the seeds of the paw paw fruit. It was truly exquisite. However, mine didn’t look that great.

  I had a great time with all of the teachers during the Art Alive Immersion Week and I hope we get some time to finish off our paintings.