Visual arts

Students enjoy developing their ability to represent ideas in the visual arts. They learn to create practical artworks using a wide variety of medias ranging from clay work to painting and many more. Learning to analyse the different beliefs that affect meaning and significance in this field is a skill that is developed in these years.

This course involves mainly practical work, offering students the opportunity to use a wide selection of art materials and techniques including painting, pottery, sculpture, drawing, video, photography, cartooning, graphic design, computer graphics and wearables. Students examine everything from traditional realistic to wild abstraction for inspiration and explore the differences between art and craft both in the practical and written components of this course.

Visual Arts involves students in the practices of art making, art criticism and art history and links them together. Students develop their own artworks culminating in a submission of ‘body of work’ in the HSC course that reflects students’ knowledge and understanding about the practices and demonstrates their ability to resolve a conceptually strong work. Students critically investigate works, critics, historians and artists from Australia as well as those from other cultures.

This course is extensive, covering the techniques of handling cameras, lenses, film, processing, printing in the darkroom, and using studio equipment. Students will become proficient photographers, being able to explore their creative ideas and expression in an individual style. They will also have the opportunity to extensively use Photoshop to manipulate their photos.

This 2 unit HSC Course over two years offers students for the first time an innovative and comprehensive approach to photography. It will provide students with the opportunity to access a variety of state of the art equipment and give them a solid understanding of techniques and technologies used in Photography, Video and Digital Imaging in a creative, exciting and imaginative way.  The use of how to manage Photoshop is also part of this content in this 2 year course.

Visual Design prepares the student for the future work environment – planning, producing and decision making. It develops skills in design and layout work (cutting, pasting, lettering, page design etc.). Artworks that may be produced include jewellery, ceramic wares and fabric design and can be applied to theoretical applications, video animation, exterior spaces, photographs and computer graphics.

This course is all about designing objects and images. These ideas will help students communicate about the world and their immediate environment by using the tool of design. Students explore design, jewellery making, stage sets, costumes, industrial production, interior design, fashion design, photography and video animation.  This study of designers as case studies and the skill to analyse unseen designed pieces is also an important aspect of this course.