Blessings Banda
"Migration Stories"
Jacob Lawrence & Visual Narrative
Statement of inquiry: Through Composition, Artists can create narratives as a means of communicating and educating an audience of social histories, journeys, and migrations.
​In this unit, students look at how Visual Art can be used as means of communicating and educating an audience of social histories, journeys, and migrations. Students explore the artwork of African American Storyteller, Jacob Lawrence who developed visual narratives recording the mass migration of African-Americans during the 1910’s. Students will develop analysis and art appreciation skills, and learn about colour theory and colour-mixing skills in order to create their own visual narratives inspired by stories of recent/current migrations.
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Skills: Narratives, Colour Mixing, Shading techniques, composition
Medium: tempura paint,
"Selfie! Who Am I?!"
Self Portraits and Expressionism
Statement of Inquiry: We can communicate our identities to an audience using expression and style.
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In this unit, students explore how Self-expression and style can be used to communicate their identity to an audience. Students inquire into Expressionism, look at early and contemporary self-portraits, analysing their composition, formal qualities, styles, techniques and use of colour, to draw conclusions and generalizations about the artist's identities. Inspired by these artists, the students create their own A3 self-portraits, that aim to communicate not only their physical appearance but their phycological being too. Throughout the unit, students develop their drawing skills, focusing on proportions of the face and facial features as well as developing new painting techniques. Students us their creative, critical and reflective thinking skills to devise their own self-portraits focusing on presenting their ideas aesthetically in their Arts process journals.
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Skills: Portraiture skills, Colour Mixing, Shading techniques, Analysis skills
Medium: Pencil, tempura paint, oil pastel, chalk