Spring Term 2022 – at Ennis Art School.
A lot of work was created this Spring Term, with all of the students trying to get a piece ready for The Texaco Children’s Art Competition. A lot of effort was put into how to create a good Portrait. Portraiture is the Gold Cup of Art, why so you may ask, it is because it has everything. It has foreshortening, tone, perspective, form, everything has to be perfect and if it is not, it is very obvious that it is incorrect. I include portraiture into all of the groups, the young children only do portraits once every term, the older children and teenagers were doing portraits for all 7 weeks. As the portrait had to be broken down into sections, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, skin tone, hair, thats just the beginning. Then there is perspective, but that is not included until the students get to grips with all aspects of non perspective portraits. Everything in art is about practice, practice and more practice, if the students want to become better they have to practice.
The following two Portraits were submitted to The Texaco Children’s Art Competition in the highest category, they are 17 and 16 years of age and I must say that their portraits are fabulous.
As the students become extremely good at creating portraits, I encourage them to take on more ambitious works, to start introducing creativity and start looking how their portrait can be gallery worthy.
Now it is not that I do not think that the other students work is not equally as fabulous, they are terrific for their age groups, the students work extremely hard on their portraits and the proof is with a bit of hard work, concentration and determination, a great portrait can be achieved, no matter what age you are.
Now for the other areas, the more fun stuff.
A lot of animals were painted, the students get a choice of a selection of images that they can learn how to paint. I do not mind what we paint in the art class, dogs, pigs, horses, birds, trees, seascapes, people, town scapes. It makes no difference to me as the students are constantly learning how to use colour, tone, how to break the painting down into shapes, how to use perspective and disappearing points. There are many benefits of painting for children including sensory development, colour learning, fine motor development, exercising creativity, being able to express emotions and building self esteem. Painting is also a great activity to help teach concepts like shapes and form in a fun and engaging way.
Finally Clay.
The students love modelling clay, from the very young to the very old.
Clay is one medium that promotes creativity. It is especially beneficial to young people – it helps promote self-confidence, encourages self-expression and develops problem-solving skills. Makes the students look at the form of the animal, how many legs has the animal, where are its ears positioned, on the top or side of the head, where is the tail positioned. How do you create eyes, nose, ears and mouth. How do you create hair. Probably one of the most important creative process when modelling clay how do you make your clay model personal to you.
