Enhancing Art Skills at Greenwood

From Tom Thomson sketches to floor art home design challenges and self-portraits made with food, our Grade 7 Art students have been learning about a variety of styles and techniques in class. 

Since online learning began, they have learned all about Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven’s contributions to Canadian landscape. They chose their favourite Tom Thomson artwork to sketch and then sent in pictures to their teacher, Ms. Petch, showing off their final piece of art. This activity was a great way to teach them about art history in Canada as well as prepare them for their trip in Grade 8 to Tamakwa where they have the opportunity to visit Tom Thomson's gravesite and memorial grounds.

During one of their classes they were challenged with a design competition to find a geometrical floor shape in their home and to fill it with household items in an interesting way. They only had 15 minutes to complete the task. Students grabbed everything from thumbtacks to playing cards and filled in unique areas of the patterns of their floor at home. 

In a separate class they were also challenged to design and create self-portraits using food found in their homes. They worked to create texture, tone and colour with detail in interesting ways. Their artwork looked wonderful and delicious! 

Meanwhile, our Grade 11s have been working on portraiture on a larger scale using skills in observation, drawing and painting. They could choose to draw or paint with any medium (pencil, paint, pastels, etc.) on any surface, and they could select any style of work that appealed to them. In class, they looked at portraits of artists for inspiration and had many opportunities to meet individually with Ms. Petch to discuss the progress of their work. The students and Ms. Petch were so happy with the results. Their portraits are phenomenal! 

They are now looking forward to working on their culminating design proposals which will be centered on designing a public work of art situated on a site in Canada to address an important Canadian issue.