Who Can Be An Artist?

As we continue exploring our identities as artists, we have been discussing what makes someone an ‘artist’. We brainstormed whether or not an animal could be classified as an ‘artist’ or not! According to our discussions, an artist means someone who: shows creativity, produces some type of art (painting, sculpture, writing, song, etc.), improves their skills, does art as a job or hobby. According to our definition, would the dog in the video (below) be considered an artist? What do you think?

 

Skull Sculpting: Blending Art & History

Did you know that some historians have found evidence that sculpture as an art form has been around since 25000 BCE? Today, we had the privilege of learning the fundamentals of clay and sculpture from our artist in residence. Our classes began creating a clay model of hominid species of their choice. Later, we will glaze them and reflect on our experience. Take a look at some of our progress photos below:

Clay Skulls: Our Socials and ADST Project

Our Grade 7s have been hard at work learning about early humans with Ms. Ramen in Socials class! We invited a artist in residence to come in and teach us how to sculpt a human skull out of clay. After sculpting, they were fired in the kiln. Then, we glazed the skulls and they will be fired a final time. We can’t wait to see the final product soon!

Some questions we suggest parents/guardians can discuss at home:

  1. What features did you include in your skull model? What species of hominin did you choose to create?
  2. How does your model skull look similar or different from our own (real) skulls?
  3. How old do you imagine your skull is? What conditions was it in (ex: desert, water)?

Van Gogh Inspired Sunflowers

I am so impressed with our Van Gogh inspired sunflowers so far! We used oil pastels to create layered, detailed sunflowers. Just like Van Gogh used colours like yellow, blue, and orange to represent how he felt and how he saw the world, we used colours creatively to craft these pieces of Art!

Sketching like a Scientist: Our Observation Journals

What does it mean to ‘sketch like a scientist’? We learned that sometimes, scientists keep observation journals with detailed illustrations of what they observe. We focused on drawing what we saw in front of us, not the picture in our heads.

I am so amazed by how detailed our illustrations turned out! We have some talented scientists in our room!