Nicola's e-Portfolio: ART

My absolute favourite subject this year, Visual Art, was one of my two options. My best friend took it too, we had the funniest teacher who was really good-natured and didn't mind us all chatting away as we worked. I was glad I had Art everyday for the whole of the first semester. Now, I've finished the subject until next year (I plan to study it until Year 13 so I can be an Interior Designer) but over these holidays I have been able to take some supplies home! My teacher was all for me taking home a huge slab of clay and so I've had a good time messing around with it. Next term I'll take it back to use the school's kiln. In comparison to last year's Art Diary (my A4 spiral bind full of my work), this year's was more frequently updated by me and I made sure to keep it very neat. Even so, both diaries got me Excellence. This year marking was done in more detail, hence my individual Excellences for drawing, understanding tone, painting, sculpture, my woodcut and my bookwork!

We progressed very rapidly through units on tone, tint and shade, shadow, clay vessels, clay impression and Mayan woodcuts. For the most part I was hugely behind the rest of he class with my slow yet careful pace, but my teacher said at Parent Interviews he didn't mind at all because my work was always finished eventually at an outstanding level! :)
Towards the end of Term 2 I sped up a little. Even now, in the holidays not all the projects got finished (though I finished all I started, just didn't get around to starting everything!) but my plan is to complete it all eventually because it was such a good curriculum. I loved every project we did and tried more new skills than I thought I would. Some I got the hang of straightaway, and some... will come in time!

~ Tone is a word used in Music, Art and Language to describe the strength or quality of a sound or note, a colour or shade, or a word or expression. In Art, tone refers to the degree of lightness or darkness of an area. Tone varies from bright white through to shades of grey, to deep black shadows. Tone is also used to describe the quality of a colour, often in comparison to an emotion, a temperature or a place. ~

~ A shadow is an area where direct light form a light source cannot reach due to an obstruction by an object. It occupies all of the space behind an opaque object with the light in front of it. ~

~ In colour theory, a tint is the mixture of a colour with white, which increases lightness. A shade is the mixture of a colour with black which reduces its lightness. ~

~ Woodcut printing is the oldest form of printing. Relief printing has its origins in China. The first form of printing arrived in Europe in the 15th Century. The first book printed in Europe was the Bible in 1458. ~

~ Glaze is silica in suspension in water. Glaze is a coating of liquid gas on the surface of a ceramic object. Glaze is coloured by adding oxide. It is fired to over 1100˙C in the kiln. ~