Digital Art

All students throughout secondary school experience the use of digital tools for creating artwork. I'm regularly amazed at speed which they learn new techniques and skills. Under the expert guidance of our Art teacher, Mr Daniel, students create quality work, often high levels of creativity.

The piece below is the work of Alyssa (Yr9) and is a lovely example of what can be produced with the aid of a computer.

Hi-Tech Impressionists

Year 6 have concluded their study of impressionist art by organising an exhibition of their work.  The displays were arranged in typical Art Gallery style, except for the addition of QR codes and Aurasma icons.

The QR were easily scanned by visitors using their phones, but there were plenty of students with iPads to assist anyone without a scanning app. The QR code opened up a description of the art, written by the artist. Here you could read about their inspiration, the background knowledge they had learned and information about the painting itself, e.g. the colours or materials used. All very interesting.

I viewed several images using the Aurasma app, which miraculously displayed a video of the artist chatting about the work, giving a first-hand account of the story behind it. This was just like having the artist there, which was very cool, except it wasn't possible to ask them questions!

Well done to Yr6 and their teachers for taking the risk of pushing the bounties of technology to enhance the experience.

Yr6 Students demonstrating the Auras for parents.

Talking Art

For our student led conferences, Yr6 presented their recent Art project with a QR code attached to each piece. I was pleasantly surprised when I scanned one and immediately heard the voice of the artist, explaining the concept, inspiration and style of their work. I like the idea of this being an audio link, as it allows you to immerse yourself in the art as you listen to the description, rather than reading the information yourself. I'll be heading back there later to listen to a few more.

Audioboo was used to record the commentary. 

iPad Art

Our Yr7s have been experimenting with an application called ArtRage to create artwork on their iPads. They started by doing a pencil sketch on paper and them imported this image into ArtRage. They then added colour & texture within the app, with the aid of a stylus. Their Art teacher, Mr Daniel, said "Considering that digital painting is new to the students and they have never used the ArtRage app before, they did exceptionally well!" I have to agree.