Arts - Curriculum Information

Year 7 Visual Arts

The areas covered in the visual arts course are: Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Textiles, Sculpture/ceramics and Art Appreciation. This course is designed to expose students to a variety of skills, techniques and media. Students are encouraged to be expressive and imaginative, developing the confidence to begin to communicate their own ideas through visual arts mediums.

Year 8 Visual Arts

The areas covered in this course are Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Ceramics/Sculpture, Textiles and Art Appreciation. Students are encouraged to explore the expressive potential of a range of techniques and media in the pursuit of self expression and technical competence. They develop an understanding of the role of the formal elements and principles of design in art and how they can be manipulated to create works of art. They learn how to analyse and compare works of art from a range of cultural contexts. The aim is to foster an enquiry based approach to learning that encourages risk taking, experimentation, evaluation and contributes to increased personal confidence and an enriched love of the arts.

Middle School Visual Arts (Years 9 & 10)

Overview of Middle School

The Visual Art department offers our students the opportunity to select from five exciting areas of arts practice. Each distinct discipline encourages our students to explore the expressive potential inherent in the specialist nature of each subject. Each subject offered is semester length and students can choose to do up to four of the visual arts units over the course of year 9 and 10. The subjects offered are listed below:

EA02: Textile Art and Sewing

The course will focus on the development of designs and the production of textile pieces. Students will develop ideas for work through observational drawing, then refine and develop these in order to create designs on fabric. The course covers the areas of hand painting on silk, using various techniques and making 'silk paper'. The surface decoration of fabric is explored through the exploration of creative stitchery.

EA03: Cool Clay Creations

In this unit, students will make functional and decorative 3-dimensional works in clay. Handbuilding methods such as draping clay over a mold, coiling, pinching, and rolling slabs will be used to create and form the artworks. Surface decoration of these works will be explored with oxides, glazes and underglazes.

Students will look at how clay is formed, the history behind each of the forming techniques and examples of other artists' work, past and present. A basic understanding of what happens during the firing process will also be studied.

EA05: Design Factory: Advertising And Architecture

Students will explore the graphic designs of professionals to generate and develop ideas for making graphic communications. The two areas of focus will be advertising and architectural design. Students will be required to consider a particular audience and apply conversions of design elements and principles to achieve desired effects. Graphic designs that are both two dimensional and three dimensional will be produced using techniques of freehand drawing, instrumental drawing and rendering by pencil and computer generated images.

EA06: Draw It, Paint It, Print It: Two Dimensional Studies

Students will undertake a wide range of two dimensional art studies that will include acrylic painting; etching; freehand perspective drawing and rendering. Students will analyse the art works of contemporary and historical artists and use this as inspiration for their own personal practical pieces.

EA07: Dark Room Magic

In this unit students will learn how to take photographs through understanding the technical functions of the SLR camera, including shutter speeds and aperture. The darkroom will become their workroom as they learn to develop their own negatives and prints. An exploration of the processes and procedures used by other photographers will be undertaken to gain an appreciation of the historical aspect of the medium.

VCE Art

Unit 1

Developing Ideas and Skills & Art and Society

This unit focuses on realising ideas through the exploration of techniques, inter media and cross media investigation. Students are introduced to materials, skills and concepts, both practical and theoretical, through a process of investigation and discussion. It includes exploration, and research leading to visual solutions.

The unit also explores the ways in which art of the past and present relates to the values of the societies for which it was created.

Unit 2

Exploring Ideas and Issues & Art and the Individual

This unit focuses on the development of art works produced from conceptual and/or imaginative starting points, demonstrating effective working methods and the development of technical skills through inter media and cross media visual exploration.

Unit 3

Investigation and Interpretation & Interpreting Art

This unit focuses on making personal art responses through a broad and innovative investigation which includes exploration and experimentation in one or more media. Throughout the unit a sustained body of work is prepared and/or developed.

This unit introduces the critical frameworks used to interpret art. The frameworks are used to respond critically to art and to reflect on the issues and ideas raised.

Unit 4

Realisation and Resolution & Discussing and Debating Art

This unit focuses on the preparation of a final presentation, demonstrating individuality, evolution of ideas and the realisation of appropriate concepts, knowledge and skill. The final presentation may be an exploratory folio and/or one or more visual solution(s). Thinking and working practices are documented throughout the unit as the inter media and/or cross media visual forms explored in Unit 3 are developed.

The unit also explores the many possibilities for meaning and understanding which exist within art. It focuses on developing skills in critical analysis of both art works and the arguments and information conveyed in commentaries on art so as to enable the development of personal points of view about the meaning of art works.

VCE Studio Arts

Unit 1

Artistic Inspiration And Techniques

The unit focuses on investigating sources of inspiration and recording observations and ideas. It also looks at exploring and developing skills in using materials and techniques appropriate to photography. The course also includes the appreciation of photographs from different times and locations.

Unit 2

"Design Exploration and Concepts"

This unit focuses on the development of the design process for the production of photographic artworks. It will also focus upon an analysis of the ways in which various visual forms are used to communicate ideas and develop style.

Unit 3

Studio Production And Professional Art Practices

This unit focuses on defining and determining the parameters and framework for an area of exploration and the development of art works through the application of a design process and the use of a work brief. The artworks will be completed in Unit Four. This unit also focuses on traditional and contemporary practices of artists in photography together with the ways in which artists develop distinctive styles and approaches to subject matter.

Unit 4

Studio Production And Art Industry Contexts

This unit focuses this unit is on the production of a cohesive folio of photographic artworks, which has developed from a design process formulated in Unit Three. This unit also looks at the different components of the arts industry, their influences on artists and their work and issues relating to the public display, promotion and critique of artworks.

Visual Communication & Design

Unit 1

Visual Communication

The main purpose of this unit is to enable students to prepare instrumental drawings of objects and explore freehand drawing from direct observation. Students will also be introduced to the design process through both practical tasks and the study of a professional practitioner.

Unit 2

Communication In Context

The main purpose of this unit is to enable students to develop practical skills by generating images and developing them through freehand and instrumental drawing. The ways in which information and ideas are communicated visually will be explored through analysing the work of others. The visual communication production process will be applied by modifying existing final presentations for specified audiences.

Unit 3

Visual Communication Practices

The main purpose of this unit is to enable students to apply the visual communication production process to satisfy specific communication needs. Students will investigate the production of visual communications in a professional setting, and evaluate examples of visual communications produced.

Unit 4

Designing To A Brief

The main purpose of this unit is to enable students to prepare one brief, and design and produce developmental work and two final presentations based on the brief.

Student Work

Visit our gallery of student work.

Student Work

Visit our gallery of student work.