Hello, I am Teacher Vicky from Artgrain Bukit Timah Branch. I graduated from Lasalle College of the Art with a BA(HONS) in Fine Arts. Majority of my students are under Headstart and Foundation Art.
On 26th January, we held our first Parent workshop of the year in our Bukit Timah Branch. Parents took their time to come down for the workshop to understand more details about Foundation and Developmental Art programme their child is attending.
I will share some of the things I had shared during the workshop here with you, mainly on the key ideas and objectives of Foundation Art and Developmental Art.
One of our main aim for Foundation Art is to help the child to develop the keenness and ability to observe and to visually articulate these observations.
The idea of observation ties together with realism art. Students are to be able to capture details through their eyes and translate that into the artwork. Hence, the entire FA programme is to have students develop observational eye.
Having observational skills means to also be able to capture tonal values. The form, light and shadows. To understand where light comes from and how shadow cast. Students will have the ability to capture 3 to 5 tones in a subject. Blending skills will be taught to enable smooth transition between light and dark tones.
Students will start off with Module 1: Basic elements of art which will help them to understand both observational skills and tonal values more. The lessons after Module 1 will be a reinforcement of the fundamentals of art.
By acquiring knowledge of the basic art elements, students will then be introduce to different artistic styles. It will allow them to broaden their artistic perspective and increase their knowledge of the different possibilities in finishing an artwork.
Students who have completed Module 5 of Foundation Art and have turned 9 years old, will move on to Developmental Art. Students that have come to this stage will have gain the knowledge of observational skills and are able to handle challenging works in DA.
In DA, students will gain maturity and sensitivity in their drawing and painting. They are able to articulate and apply the element of art and technical skills they had learnt in FA to a much challenging works in DA. Hence, independence will be encouraged in our teaching steps.
DA programme also allows students to be exposed to more mediums other than acrylic painting. We allow more in depth understanding of the medium and how to apply them to an artwork. They will also gain more knowledge of different artist and the styles they apply in a work, therefore students are able to create more imaginative works.
As some parents who have been with Artgrain for couple of years will know that we have Special Art projects every month and assessment biannually. This year, we have some changes in our Special Art project as we will be taking on a project base structure in which students will be given 3 weeks to brainstorm, execute and complete with final finishing. Hence, there will be total of 4 Special Art Project in 2018. Our first Special Project will take place in February and students can look forward to realising their creative ideas.
Our assessment take place during mid-year and end of year. Assessments are important to students as teacher will get to gauge students’ progress and growth in Artgrain, and parents will be given feedback base on what they had shown in the assessment.
I hope after reading through this blog, you have some ideas of how our programmes work and if you would like to attend our parent workshops to get a fuller understanding of what your child is learning in class. Contact your studio and join us for our parent workshop!