Visual Art Term 4 2021
Drawing is Seeing…
What’s inside my head? Week 1
John, Prep
This term we will explore the language of drawing in relation to an understanding of ourselves, and understanding ourselves in relation to others. There is no right or wrong way to draw, but rather, drawing is a process of discovery, of being curious about the world, and exploring the many ways of making marks and recording something. Emotional literacy can be defined as the ability to understand ourselves and other people. It includes the ability to understand, express and manage our own emotions. Through the visual arts, we use a range of mediums to explore our own emotions, because unless we are aware of our own feelings, how can we fully understand others? Over the course of the term, we will use drawing and a variety of other mediums to explore ourselves and our thoughts, and then those of others. We will work individually and collaboratively using a range of mediums and artists to understand, express and manage our own emotions, build empathy and understand the world around us. In week one, while still on-line, students drew a self-portrait of their head and visualised their thoughts and feelings through a series of drawings coming out of their head! We called this exercise, “What’s inside your head!” Through this process students made their thoughts and feelings visible to the world. The artist David Shrigley loves to draw postcard sized drawings. He draws a lot of his thoughts and feelings about himself and the world on these postcards. We used his work as inspiration.
Students began by examining their face in the mirror and drawing a self-portrait of their head and shoulders. They began at the bottom of the page and so as to leave enough room to create drawings coming out of your head in the top three quarters of the page. The drawings that emerged out of the students’ heads represented their thoughts and feelings at that moment. They then used colour to embellish and reinforce the message. The older students were asked to repeat the process at different times of the day and during the week and display their postcards on the wall. This created a weekly diary of their thoughts and feelings.
