Portraits inspired by ASKEW

In term 2 room 11 studied the Auckland based artist ASKEW and looked at the ways in which he created portraits using a variety of different painting techniques.

After looking at the use of colour and how the peoples faces still looked like people underneath, Room 11 had a go at making their own paintings using ASKEW's as a reference. The paintings came out very well and because ASKEW still works as a street artist, we decided to present the paintings in a street scene that we created in the classroom. 

My motivation and justification behind choosing ASKEW as an artist model is based upon using the students own experience to guide learning. It is naive to ignore the presence of street art in Auckland and around the world at the moment. It is a growing movement that is currently bordering two worlds; on the one hand it is still viewed as vandalism of public and more often private property while on the other hand Street Artists are increasingly finding themselves in high art galleries and in auction houses around the world. There is a tension between how they should be viewed and interpreted. Choosing a street artist is something that is relevant to my students lives, the next day after introducing ASKEW students came back telling me they had spotted some on dairies and on walls in the streets. Would this have been possible with an European Artist or even a Classical Painter? Choosing an Artist that grew up in Auckland was also another explicit teaching decision I made to help engage and guide my students learning through the term. Ultimately using these explicit decisions through my planning and implementation of the art topic ensured that my students were actively engaged and excited to learn and produce their own individual pieces of artwork.