The Visual Communications degree show opened on the 29th of May. Unfortunately I didn't make the night itself but called in to see the work later in the week. As always I was really impressed with the standard. I'm getting really frustrated with my camera phone as the quality is so terrible!! New camera on the horizon...
I could only attend the Friday night of this years ATAI conference. The exhibition of student work was again really inspiring. The standard is incredible. Here are a few images from the evening.
As i've mentioned, i'm currently doing my H.Dip placement in my old school, St. Aloysius College, Carrigtwohill. It's great being back and seeing how everything works from the other side! When I was a student I had no idea how much planning and co-ordination goes on, not to mention the close eye that was kept on all of us!
Over Christmas I set up a blog for the art department, artofstalscarrig.blogspot.com. You can check it out here. It showcases work from across the six years in the various disciplines. There's been some really incredible work produced, this just gives you a taster.
Not art related, but I also set up a TY blog with the pupils have been keeping really active, it gives a great insight into the school, you can check it out here.
A series of lino prints created as part of the curriculum studies module in the H.Dip for Art and Design teachers. I used a photoshop painting I did a few years ago (pictured below) as a starting off point. I hadn't done lino since school and I really enjoyed this process, particularly experimenting with cross-hatching to build up tone and depth and printing on different types of paper for different results.
First ever wire sculpture! This was done as part of the curriculum studies module for the H. Dip in art and design teaching. I focused on retaining the cleanness of the wire line and building this as sparsely as possible. I went on to build another wire sculpture, taking the opposite approach - layering it up with loads of wire to create texture. I'll photograph that and pop that up here too when I get a chance.
We've finished semester one now, it's been great! I've really enjoyed it. We don't have college again now until February so it will be really nice to be able to fully concentrate on teaching at school and put in longer days there.
One of my first year groups recently completed these animations in our art class. I'm so impressed with how much they learned and how well they applied it, we had very limited time to complete these animations and I thought that we would still be working on them after Christmas, happily, they all got done in time for the Christmas break. So proud of them!
These are a few monoprints I did as part of the H.Dip course. The two more drawn-looking ones are based on previous drawings i've done (the hair one should be pretty familiar - i've gotten great mileage out of that!). I love the very different line quality that monoprint affords. The slightly scary one was made by taking away ink from the plate using the back of a paintbrush and a piece of bark, a totally alternative way of creating an image and it can have very interesting / different results. It's coming close to the end of semester one now, feeling the pressure!!
I've been neglecting my blog so much, i'm not going to feel guilty about it though! As I mentioned before, i'm studying for the H.Dip in Art and Design Education at the moment. It's MENTAL busy, so i'm thinking two posts a month until June (when I get my life back!) I'm also making a teaching blog as part of the course, it's private at the moment but i'll make it public once i've finished the course.
On a Wednesday, we have peer teaching day (curriculum studies) when we make art and learn a new discipline with the aim of teaching that discipline in class. Here is a series of shots of a still life painting I did recently, I had an earlier still life that I really wanted to improve on, rather than re-working that I started again here.
