Art: tile carving and screen-printing

We have been trying out tile carving in class.  First, we draw a design we like on paper (if it has words we need to write these backwards) and then use this to make an impression on the tile.

The lines are drawn in using a Vivid and this gives us a clear line to follow (and avoid with the carving chisel). We want to leave the line raised above the rest of the tile, by carving out everything else, so when we print the lines will make an impression on the paper.

Next, we place the tile on a carving board so we can safely carve the design as shown here by Jake and Hayden.

.Here are some photos of printed work.  We discovered more material had to be removed from the tile to ensure a 'clean' backround without paint streaks.

Planetarium visit- Napier's Holt Planetarium

Yeasterday Rooms 13 and 17 visited the Holt Planetarium as part of this term's 'Explaining the Unknown' Inquiry topic.  Mr Gary Sparks led a discussion on the night sky, explaining the history of constellations; using stars for navigation; and the history and future of the universe.  He said Antares, a red super-giant star in the constellation of Scorpio, was big enough to enclose Earth if it was in the same place as the sun!   Lucky it's not.  Also, if we travelled as fast as the fastest man-made object, something which can orbit the Earth in an hour, it would still take 75,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth other than our own sun.  Light from Alpha Centauri takes four years to reach us, travelling at a fraction under 300,000km/second.  So humans have a long way to catch up to that!