All the ways to be smart

As part of our deep dive into Teamwork, we have been reading 'All The Ways To Be Smart', by Allison Colpoys and Davina Bell. 

 

'All The Ways To Be Smart' is a lively exploration of how each one of us brings something different and special. 

 

When we're part of a team, we bring our 'ways to be smart' to the group. More different 'ways to be smart' make our team stronger.

 

 

We have been exploring our personal 'ways to be smart' through drawing, painting and writing. Our individual artworks will together to make one, big piece of Autahi team art. 

 

 

All our individual pieces of art working together make the collaborative artwork extra special. Visit Autahi to enjoy our completed artwork and see all the different 'ways to be smart' that we bring to our Autahi team.

What's inside an artist's head?

Ever wondered what goes on in the head of an artist? 

We have been inspired to explore this idea by Ed Vere's wonderful picture book The Artist.

The Artist in the story has a head full of ideas and images. This is her world and helps her to create her art.

We began a conversation in Autahi about what we enjoy thinking about and what fills up our heads. Talk became some writing, and then drawing. We asked our artists to draw each idea on a separate piece of paper. It was fascinating to see what each person drew, from diggers and police dogs to butterflies, unicorns, friends and family.

They painted each drawing carefully with water colours. When the paint was dry, we outlined some bold details in Sharpie before bubble-cutting each picture.

Each artist collected between six and ten ideas so we had lots and lots of small works of art on the go.

Taking inspiration from The Artist, we made a large silhouette of each person's head by using a torch to project their shadow onto a wall. This may have been the trickiest part of the process: everyone had to keep very still so that their shadows could be drawn onto black paper.

We placed all of the small artworks inside the our silhouette heads. The finishing touches were to create colourful backgrounds to frame our 'heads' and contrast with the black, as well as a few decorations in oil pastel.

Here is a little taster of our finished art.

This art piece took us many weeks to complete and we are very proud of how it turned out. Drop by Autahi and visit our gallery for more glimpses of what goes on in the heads of our Autahi artists.

 

 

Crafting an Albatross

To tie in with our inquiry into Water this term we wanted to explore some of the creatures that live in and around the water.

We settled on an Albatross to explore for our art as it provided lots of different aspects we could bring together.

We started by sketching an Albatross 4 times to practise our technique. We used a 4 part sketch where each sketch is made with different information.

The 1st sketch is what you think an Albatross looks like

The 2nd sketch we looked at pictures of an Albatross 

The 3rd sketch we took feedback from a buddy. We shared something we liked and something we though they could try on their next sketch

The 4th sketch was made bringing all the elements together for an ultimate Albatross

       


Next we traced around an Albatross to use for our final art piece. Then we carefully cut around it and finally added detail like the shading on it's wings and the nostril hole, eye and beak.


               

The last stage was to make our background. We first experimented with colour mixing by adding white paint to blue to gradually make it lighter. We used sponges to dab our paint and added many layers to give our ocean a sense of movement and texture.

After folding a spring by weaving to pieces of paper, our Albatross were ready to take flight. Here they are soaring above our heads in the classroom.
The whole process came together over many days and I think you will agree when I say they look                                                            amazing.

Arts Celebration: Our learning journey

It has been a big build up to our annual arts celebration this year. We have been reflecting on all of the inquiry learning from throughout the year. From planets and space to journeys across the world to New Zealand and to our local environment. We used lots of different styles and mediums to create pieces that show lots of our learning.





Here we are creating invitations for our friends and whanau to invite them along.


We made ink blot insects using kebab sticks and droppers


We stamped our backgrounds to personalise our visual pepeha.



Some fabulous musicians shared their talent with us as we practised our strength of appreciating beauty and excellence.

John showed us lots of the sculptures the seniors were working on.

It took lots of perseverance to finish all the pieces of art.


We used observational drawings of the leaves in our local environments.


We used light to create silhouette art that tells the story of Kupe and the octopus on his voyage to New Zealand.

Thank you all for your support and for helping us celebrate our learning.

Arts Celebration

We are working hard at the moment gearing up for the arts celebration later this term. In Autahi we are exploring different kinds of visual art and using different mediums to show some of our inquiry learning from throughout the year so far. Each week we will showcase some of what we have been working on and we encourage you all to come and join us in Week 5 to check out our gallery of creations.

Arts Celebration:
Wednesday 21st and Thursday 22nd of August from 5.30pm til 7pm
Come and check out our amazing art from across the school.