Musselburgh Grammar Art & Design Blog

Work by last years Advanced Higher pupils is now available to view. Exemplar work will continue to be updated, so keep checking our Advanced Higher page!

2008 exemplar Intermediate 2 and Higher work will also be available to view soon..

If you missed the recent annual SQA exhibition of last years Higher Art & Design candidates at the Scottish Parliament, don’t worry. There are another 2 exhibitions still to come… an exhibition of mixed levels to be held in Glasgow, and the first Advanced Higher exhibition to be held in Edinburgh early next year.

Well worth a visit, so go along and be amazed at the stunning work of young artists and designers emerging from Scotland.

The People’s Palace, Glasgow

1 December 2008 — 16 January 2009

This exhibition will feature a selection of Higher works from the Scottish Parliament exhibition together with the best works from Standard Grade, Intermediate 1, and Intermediate 2. Over 100 pieces will be displayed.

The National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

22 January — 19 March 2009

This is the first ever major exhibition of Advanced Higher artwork. A must see for all those who are interested in Art & Design.

Click here to go to the SQA website and see photos of work in the exhibitions.

The new Comic Book/Graphic Novel club has started!

Held on a Tuesday Lunchtime, the pupils have high hopes of producing great comic book/graphic novel characters… everyone has different interests from manga to traditional cartoons, so it’ll be fun to see what everyone comes up with.  Watch this space!!!

Membership to the club is currently full. However, if you were interested in joining this club, but weren’t able to make it the first week, see Mrs Walker in D11 to see if there have been any changes to membership.

We hope to use Comic Life to produce any comic strips. Keep checking the ‘Comic Book’ page to see characters as they develop!

Our Advanced Higher pupils were lucky enough to take part in a woodcut workshop held in the Art & Design Department last week.

Visiting artist Denise Walker led the workshop, taking pupils through the process from initial drawings to two colour print. The morning was hard work but well work the effort, experience and outcome.

Thanks to Denise for all her hard preparation work which benefited both staff and pupils!

It may have taken a while to find the photos, but finally here they are!

To set the tone for the new S3 course, the Art & Design Department decided to break with tradition and try something different for the last few weeks of the session! Out went our traditional course and taking ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’ forward, we decided to link with other Departments and put on ‘Mussie Makeover’, a fashion show aimed at highlighting environmental issues.

The theme was to recycle and reinvent - something our new S3 did brilliantly. The purpose was to build skills, build relationships and confidence as well as enjoy putting on a show!

Art & Design, Citizenship, English and Maths all worked together to produce this successful event. Well done everybody - a great day and a fun day!

Thanks to all who contributed - the designers, the models, the photographers, the staff and of course the hostess with the mostest - Mr ‘Mac’Bray (yep, the most ’stylish’ of them all).

Check out the ‘A Curriculm for Excellence’ or ‘S3′ pages for more photos!

Our Rotary Young Photographer of 2008 was presented with her trophy at a ceremony on Monday night at the Quay. Well done again, Morag!

All you budding photographers - look out for next years competition!

The National Library of Scotland recently held a great exhibition called ‘Local Heroes - The Art of the Graphic Novel’. This exhibition celebrated the history of the graphic novel and allowed viewers to visually see how the style of graphic novels has changed since their conception. The fascinating exhibits ranged from ‘The Beano’ to ‘2000AD’, to the recently re-released ‘Kidnapped’.

Members of staff from the English Department, Art & Design and Mr Bray had attended different illustrated talks relating to Graphic Novels. Gary Erskine, a freelance Scottish comic artist who is currently working on the new Dan Dare novels, led one of these talks. His enthusiasm for graphic novels and how they could be used in schools was inspiring - watch this space!

The exhibition is now finished, but the Art & Design Department are fortunate enough to have acquired a large number of exciting resources from it. These include large visual display boards that we hope to display in the Department, and around the school, as well as lots of graphic novels. Many thanks to the National Library for letting us have these resources.

Rotary Young Photographer Competition

Congratulations to Morag Barton, one of our S6 Advanced Higher Art & Design pupils, who was named as the winner of the ‘My Home Town’ section of the Rotary Young Photographer Competition.

Morag won the District 1020 competition which covers the whole of the South of Scotland, and over 50 Rotary clubs. A formal presentation ceremony is to be held in the Quay in June. Well done Morag!

The countdown is on!

During June, the new S3 are creating designs for the Fashion Show to be held on the second last day of term. The theme is recycling and the aim is to develop new skills, build up team-working skills and confidence, and most of all HAVE FUN!

To do this, we desperately need your junk!! We can use almost anything as long as it’s clean. So start searching for plastic bottle and containers, plastic lids, zips, buttons, sheets, clothes, bags, hats, ties, newspapers, magazines, nuts, bolts, screws. The list is endless.

Please bring up your junk to the Art & Design Department - we will recycle and reinvent!

The Art & Design Department have recently had Malcolm Cruickshank, an Artist in Residence, working with a number of pupils. All artwork was based on the Museum at Prestongrange, with pupils taking inspitaion from photographs that Malcolm had taken.

Initial drawings by S1, S2 & S3 pupils formed the basis for abstract sculptural works, mostly created using recycled materials. The S3 sculpture is soon to be placed in the school garden.

An exhibition of work is currently on in the Brunton Hall and should remainon display until August. Go to the Box Office and ask to see it!