Art and Design

Head of Department: Mrs Rayner, raynern@ashfordschool.co.uk

Still life

This is your first coursework project for year 12. You will be working on this project right up until the end of Michaelmas term. It is fantastic that you can get a head start and get working on this now. Find your inspiration around the home or other places. Starting points could be: • A natural still life (the pile or clothes/books on your bedroom floor, the kitchen sink, a windowsill, the table after a meal) • A selection of objects that are grouped in colour, size, theme. • A traditional still life selection (fruit, flowers etc) • Vanitas or Memento Mori • The contents of a bin, drawer, bag • Food, drink, recycling, containers • Broken objects • Objects of personal significance, family heirlooms, jewellery • Objects that decay or change over time

Explore different ways of recording your still life selections: video, time-lapse, photography, digital drawing, drawing, painting, collage etc. Join Pinterest and start your own Still Life Board. Follow this link for Ashford School Art Department https://pin.it/1Brl2NY

There is a separate PowerPoint full of artists attached to this also, that you will use to help inspire you. You may, of course, find and use your own artists. You will see some of the artists push the boundaries of what can be classed as a still life. This is something we will discuss further and something for you to think about. At this stage your work will jump around with different ideas and responses to the theme of Still life and that is fine. We will focus down later in the year. I am not going to state the amount of work expected from you, you will all work at different rates. As usual you will need to write about your artists in your own words, respond to them in your way. Draw from real life, take photos, experiment with different media, consider filming, recording sound, writing thoughts, keeping a diary with drawings? Use photo editing apps on phones/iPad to help you edit photos and overlay images or cut and collage. All the adobe apps are useful, but you can’t get them on a Microsoft Surface. Autodesk sketchbook on the Surface is very useful and well worth experimenting and playing with. You may have your own laptop with the Adobe Creative Suite installed on it. This is recommended but not a requirement. See what editing software you have and familiarise yourself with its capabilities. Keep any experiments, edits, digital drawings even if you don’t think they are very good. We will want to see what you have been up to. Have fun and bring your work to your first art lesson, print some of your favourite photography, have the rest ready for viewing on your laptop (preferred) or another device. Please also bring a named A1 portfolio for storing larger works that you will be producing. This work is not included in the work that Miss Spires will ask you to do at the taster sessions but, ultimately, they will form part of the same project. We look forward to welcoming you. The Art department