Yesterday, we went on a field trip to the Master's Art Gallery in Mission. We started by exploring the gallery and picking a painting that we wanted to learn more about. We learned facts about the artwork like what it's made out of by reading the information plaque beside the artwork. In our journals, we had to critique the artwork by explaining how the artwork made us feel, and what we thought was good about it. For one question, we even pretended that we were IN the painting and writing what we would hear, taste, and smell.
Then, we gathered as a group, and got to listen to a real-live artist speak. Her name was Amy Dryer. Normally, in an oil painting, artists work from dark colours to light colours, but Amy usually works from light to dark. She starts by painting reds, browns, and yellows on the canvas, and after they dry, adding blues on top. She is famous for her "starry night" skies which have large, circle-ish shapes, which she hides designs in, like a constellations. Her favourite subject is the canoe. Amy said she was very inspired by a famous Canadian artist named Tom Thompson, who lived over a hundred years ago.
Amy said she started drawing when she was three years old, and her parents collected her art and put it into journals. She attended several art schools, and started working with her favourite medium: oil paints around the age of 20. Some things we liked about her art are:
"She hides stuff in her art. She gets inspiration from other artists." ~ Viaan
"Her art style is very unique." ~ EF
"If she draws a canoe, she doesn't just do red, she puts other colours in it." ~ Gillian
"Her favourite time is night and most of her paintings are of night time." ~ AA
"I like that her stars aren't just regular stars; she put her own twist on it." ~ Wynn
"I like how she doesn't really paint small paintings, most of them are big." ~ Jackson
"I liked that in her paintings, they're not like what other people do, she does all different techniques." ~ Effie
"When she is drawing a person, she draws the head first." ~ Fatima
"I like that she's creative and not totally realistic." ~ Oliver
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| They gave us a big strip of paper to draw on! |
"It was my first time seeing art live. It was beautiful and some were wonky." ~ AA
"I now know that sometimes the art is historical and sometimes it's new." ~ HC
"I liked the all the different artist's art had different shapes and colours." ~ Effie
"I liked that I got to see all the different ways you could draw things. Like the canoes, were not just red but also yellow and green and orange." ~ Gillian
"I liked that even though every painting in the gallery was different, they all kind of went together." ~ EF
"I learned that there is a painter called Alexander Young Jackson." ~ Oscar
"I liked how they make some of their art cartoony." ~ Fatima
"I liked the pin art explosions." ~ Jackson
"I liked that some of the lines make it look like there was texture." ~ Oliver
"You can hide other drawings in your art." ~ Viaan
"I liked colouring." ~ Dima
We read the ridiculous and silly book, Stuck, by Oliver Jeffers. In the book, the main character Floyd keeps throwing things up in a tree to knock down his kite. 
