We’re excited to have started our second year of classes! A big welcome back to all of our returning students. It’s also lovely to see some new faces joining us!

Term 1 at Art Stars will be focusing on textiles. We’ll be learning various techniques involving different kinds of fabric, including tie dying, weaving, sewing and fabric sculpture. We’ll be investigating the work of contemporary textile artists such as Michael Brennand-Wood, and creating our own pieces inspired by their work.

Here’s what we got up to in our first week- please click on a photo to enlarge it.

Amber & Turquoise Class

Our reception, year 1 and year 2 artists tried their hands at weaving a web this week! We investigated different kinds of wool, yarn and fabric, and chose contrasting pieces to weave onto a chicken wire framework. We thought about the kinds of patterns we could create by weaving in different directions. We also made spiders to live in our webs!

Magenta & Violet Class

Our year 3 and 4 artists learnt a circle weaving technique. We formed a star shape onto a piece of cardboard, then chose lengths of different kinds of wool and yarn to weave through it. We showed great perseverance as some aspects of this technique were quite fiddly!

 

Emerald Class

Our year 5 and 6 artists started a two week batik project. We talked about the process of batik in which patterns are drawn onto fabric using molten wax before being dyed- the wax prevents the dye from reaching the patterned areas of the fabric, which therefore remain white. We are going to be recreating the look of batik using glue. This week we designed an image and traced it onto fabric with the glue, which will act in a similar way to the wax.

 

Cyan Class- Discover Arts Award 

Cyan Class is our new Arts Award Discover class! This week we looked through our lovely new log books to familiarise ourselves with the format of the award. We discussed various art forms that we had experienced before, either as an audience member or through participation, and made notes about them in our logs. We spent some time personalising the front cover.

 

Indigo Class- Bronze Arts Award

Indigo class are now launching into part C of the Bronze Arts Award, which involves researching artists, craftspeople and art practitioners. This week we reviewed the work we did over the summer based on last term’s theme of the journey. We then prepared for next week’s visit to the studio of local printmaker John McGowan, who is going to show us how to produce a drypoint intaglio print! For this we designed an A6 size line drawing which will be the starting point for our print. We also watched some youtube videos of John’s work. We will be asking John questions about his artistic practice and conducting our own research for this part of the award.