Art and DT

As part of our learning about Australia, we have been finding out about Aboriginal dot painting. Did you know that many dot paintings contain hidden meanings? The Aboriginal people were worried about their sacred stories being stolen by the White Europeans and so used symbols to conceal their true meaning. 

We also looked at the work of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Emily Kame Kngwarreye who, although both being dot painters, had very different styles!

We then experimented with different tools and media to find out what will be the best approach when we produce our own dot paintings tomorrow. 

This term we have been learning about Katsushika Hokusai. He was a Japanese artist who featured Mount Fuji in much of his work. Hokusai used simplified images and muted colours to create his landscapes, creating even blocks of colour with some blending. 

We studied Hokusai's work, sketching and colouring our own versions of his images before applying his style to our own piece of another famous mountain. We then experiments with oil pastels and watercolours to decide which media would give us out desired effects. Finally, we worked on a final piece, bringing together everything we had learnt about Hokusai and his style. 

We have finished our learning about the Viking invasion of Anglo-Saxon England by creating our own replica Viking longships. 

First, we did some research on what the Viking boats were like. This informed our designs as we made our boats long and narrow (to be able to travel up rivers), with a removable figure head - for warning off bad spirits - and with striped sails as the Vikings would have done. 

We then investigated different materials to make our models from, exploring which materials were best for: floatation, durability, waterproofing and malleability.

Finally we made our boats using a range of materials and techniques. We have a whole fleet of boats now ready to go raiding!