Over the past several weeks our budding Year 11 VCE Studio Arts students have been creating full-colour, still-life paintings inspired by the theme of ‘work’.
Students associated the theme of work with a broad range of professions, and they depicted those professions through the tools, implements and objects associated with them; from a beautician’s make-up kit to a De-Walt mitre saw.
The students’ paintings are remarkable for their fidelity to the objects that they depict. Students have taken great care to represent the surfaces, textures and forms of the objects of work, and in doing so they have done justice to the daily lives of workers, and their own artistic ideas.
This unit of work reinforces and refines students’ understanding of painting, which has been developed throughout their time at OLMC. Painting features throughout the art courses from Years 7 to 11, however each time students return to painting they address it more complexly. Fundamental paint handling skills developed in Year 8 are refined through middle-years projects painting animals and people, until, in Year 11, students complete these full colour paintings, which are the ultimate test of their skills and perception.
While challenging, this task is broken down for students into distinct stages, first students mix the colours for their paintings, then they complete an ‘imprimatura’ colour wash to harmonise their paintings, and finally they paint each section of their painting in acrylic paint.