Melissa's Melting Pot

After having been a task to design a pictorial poster to advertise coming to visit Plymouth we began by asking ourselves what a poster is in one word, and came up with answers such as visual, concise, propaganda and informative. Other definitions that came up were any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to wall or vertical surface and uses text and graphics – sometimes just one or the other. We then looked at the purpose of a poster and came up with answers such as to convey meaning, instructional, to request, to protest and for advertising purposes. When researching what components make a poster I found that Aristoff stated ‘A less-is-more principle remains a reasonable assumption: the fewer informative elements used, the more appealing and effective the poster’. This is regarding the composition and visual elements in particular and means that to create an effective poster you do not need to overcrowd it; just one significant image is enough with a catchy slogan or...

Once we had covered all of the different joining techniques we then went on to create Iron Men (although mine looks more like a robot...) This was putting the skills which we had learnt into practice and personally I used all three of the techniques as I wanted to test them out to see how they ended up looking in practice. We also discussed the use of tools such as knives in schools as our technician Tony asked us if we were to teach a clay lesson in a primary school would we allow our class to use knives, instinctively I answered no due to the health and safety of having a set of knives in the classroom but Tony made a really good point that if you do not allow the children to work with proper tools then you are limiting their experience with Art as the plastic tools that had sharp pointy ends were just as dangerous if used to poke or stab someone else. This really made me think about allowing the children to work with knives as before I would have said automati...

In our foundation art session this week we did clay work with the art technician which I found really useful. This is because I have not done much ceramic work in art other than back in secondary school when we made coil pots and painted them, but I really enjoyed this session as it felt like we were achieving something and actually had made an object that we could take away and keep. I think that many schools shy away from using clay as it is messy and the teachers if they are non specialists may not have had much experience in working with the material themselves, but it is such a useful and hands on method of creating a thing that the children can take away and keep that we shouldn't deny children in primary schools of this experience. In this session we covered three different techniques of creating pots which were creating: Pinch Pots  Which is where you start with a ball of clay and stick your thumb in the middle and pinch around the outside to create your pot so p...

Here are some photos of my final Illustration.

This week we learnt about how children's book illustrations use techniques, methods and approaches including visual elements (such as line, tone and colour) to create characterisation, and also looked into interpreting the work of a chosen illustrator through a 2D practical activity. To begin the session we looked at the books which we had brought in with us and discussed our books in relation to the prompt questions which Sadie had given us which were: What is the Illustrator trying to communicate? How are they doing it? Thinking about colour, composition, materials, scale, size, emotions, where the text is placed and the relationship between the illustration and text. Through discussion I thought about this in regards to the book which I had brought in called 'Doing the Animal Bop - by Jan Ormerod and Lindsey Gardiner' and some things which came up were that I thought about how the illustrator was trying to convey different emotions such as shock, ...

This term we have moved on to the non core subjects which are: Art, Design and Technology, RE, History, Geography, Modern Foreign Languages, and PE. So I'll be posting updates and reflections on them when I have the chance :) It's been an interesting term so far as we have been doing Art, Design and Technology, Geography and RE and had four sessions of each. Personally I think that this is a good introduction to the foundation subjects but I feel we need more seminars in terms of how teaching these subjects which are not our specialisms would be approached in different schools. So far I've found most of the sessions useful and feel more confident a little if I were to teach any of these subjects, although admittedly I'm more comfortable with the creative subjects such as Art and DT as these subjects I am used to have have a wide subject knowledge of. We are now on a printing project in our specialism Art but have covered pictorial posters and illustration so far thi...

In our Specialism Art this term we are starting off on the topic of illustration and what illustration actually is and means to different people. We began by discussing where you may find illustrations and we decided that we would look at books, but what type of books had illustrations in them? As a class we came up with answers such as picture books, children's books, and illustrated books. We then were asked by Sadie (Lecturer) to consider where we may find these type of books? Whereabouts would you go looking within a school to find illustrated books? Answers that came out through discussion were in reading corners of classrooms, libraries, and reception classes as illustrated books or picture books are generally found in classes where children may struggle to read and therefore rely on the pictures to tell the story. But I don't think that this should be the case as picture books often contain beautiful illustrations which could be used as a basis for an art project, for...

Personally I love DT and think that it should be taught in all schools but sometime it is overlooked and pushed aside for other subjects as teachers are not comfortable in teaching DT because of the equipment and subject knowledge that is needed, and also that it is seen as as dangerous using saws etc... In our DT session we covered a lot of basic skills such as sawing, joining, shaping and finishing of materials and products. As we are in a mixed class a range of people had different skills within this subject and just because some people were comfortable with these skills others had never picked up a saw and could not have pointed out a hack saw from any other type of saw. Within Design and Technology there are three different sections to consider which are: Focused Practical Tasks Investigate, Disassemble, Evaluation Activity Design and Make Activity  We started off by talking about reclaimed materials, and were asked  "Why do we use re...