Silkworms made to spin coloured silk - Australian Geographic

Silkworms made to spin coloured silk - Australian Geographic

I thought this was a really interesting article, I had no idea that the actual silk worms changed their colours. This is the link to the article
silkworms-spin-coloured-silk

Colour theory tasks

I believe that colour is one of the fundamental elements of art and design. I always do a series of basic sheets with all my year 7,8 and 9 students, and then give them a more detailed project.

For the year 7's it is often the first time they have done much colour theory. It is more of a refresher for the year 8 and 9's. The practical task they do will change every year so they don't do the same project more than once.

My year 7's main task is a primary colour collage (photos coming)

My year 8's made a secondary colour collage (no photos sorry).

My year 9's complete a colour wheel as creatively as possible. (photos coming)

I have pasted images below of a few of the handouts I use with my students. Feel free to use these with your own classes.

I use the sheets below in my year 8 class.

        

The sheet below is one I often do with the year 8's as a bit of a fun fill in activity. 

Publishing of student work

I had asked my workplace a while back about posting photos of students work on here. I just got an answer- Yay. As long as I don't publish student names and ask their permission I'm allowed to.

I have discussed with my students the pro's and con's and what it all means for them.

I will start posting photos of their work really soon.

I've been away for a while

I haven't been posting on here for a while as I've had some major life changing issues going on. I won't go into detail at this point but I have had a very long and difficult few months.

Things are moving forward now and I've been busy at work and have a lot of textiles/artwork to catch up on.

My cats are still keeping me company as always. One of them just scared me half to death by putting her paw on my shoulder. I didn't realise she had snuck onto the back of the couch behind me.

This is Millie below making use of anything she can for a pillow.

How I use my sketchbooks Part 2.

I posted some images from a couple of my sketchbooks in my last post. Today I'm going to show a few more of the specific uses I have set up for some of my sketchbooks.

The photos below are from a sketchbook that was dedicated to collecting images and drawing ideas for embellishment, eg. beads, etc.

The sketchbook below is dedicated purely to drawing images of trees.

The one below is used for collecting and drawing ideas for work.

I find it useful to also keep all the information I gather at workshops in the one place. I write notes, draw sketches, etc. all in the one sketchbook. See below.

How I use my sketchbooks Part 1.

I’ve been keeping sketchbooks in various forms since I was in Year 12 at High School. Our Year 12 Art teacher made us keep a sketchbook where we did drawings and also collected images of interest, newspaper clippings, etc. I still have my 2 sketchbooks to this day.

I used to put all my drawings, things I collect etc. all into one sketchbook. It got too hard to find what I was looking for and so I made my sketchbooks for specific purposes. I still have lots of different sketchbooks nowadays, but each one has a different purpose.

I have a small one (10 x 15cm) that is handy just to put in your handbag when going to an art exhibition, etc. It is small enough to draw ideas in while in a gallery etc. without it being overtly obvious what your doing. This one is really my only multi purpose sketchbook.

Some photos of pages from my small sketchbook are below.

As I said earlier, most of my sketchbooks are for specific purposes. The one below was dedicated to Papermaking. I would included samples of papers I was making, write questions I wanted to find out the answers to, draw ideas, etc. See images below.