What did we do?

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In this unit, we focused on the basic aspects of art, such as tone, shading and techniques. Before we began to start learning about these different topics, we got a pre-learning sheet where we reflected on ourselves at the beginning of the year and did some sketches to show where we were at the time. This gave out teacher a good understanding of our ability. To begin, we did some simple sketches in our book that represented tone and shading and symmetry. Once our teacher thought we were ready, we did our first in-class assessment. We were to simply draw a picture of a egg on a crumpled piece of paper, using a grid and graphite technique taught by our teacher. This gave us a good understanding of the technique, which allowed us to take it to another level. We used the same technique, except it was a drawing of our hands, holding something that represented us. I chose to hold a paintbrush, as it represents art, which I am very passionate about. 

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All these techniques and drawings led us to explore a very new method of creating art. To start we used white paint to paint a picture of a ball on a table, on a black piece of paper. This shows us the different tones used, which we then used to create our lino cut-out. Here we got a piece of lino and were to create a picture of a ball on a table. This would create a good representation of tone. Finally, we inked the lino, and printed it onto a piece of paper. 

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How did we do it?

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We used a range of techniques that represented tone and shading in different ways. For example, when we created the egg on the crumpled piece of paper, we used a grid and graphite technique. We would draw a grid on both a plastic sheet of paper and on our piece of paper. We would first use the plastic sheet to hold it in front of the egg to get the basic outline of the object. Then we would smudge graphite on our piece of paper, so that when we finish drawing out the object, we just erase the background. We did the exact same for the hand drawing, as it was very effective and made it easier to incorporate tone and shading into our picture. 

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For the lino print of a ball on a table, we first got a black piece of paper with white paint, and painted a ball on table with only white paint. This helped us to see the different tones and their effects. Then we went onto the lino, where we used sharp tools to cut out parts of the lino. By referring to our black and white painting, we would only cut out the parts that were white, so that when we painted over the lino, it would show a contrast in the different tones. All these steps led towards my final print.