Art 

Welcome to The Drimnagh Castle Secondary school art blog. Here we will be showing you all our schools artwork and updating you with the latest news from the art rooms. Our school has a wide variety of artwork ranging from First Years to Sixth Years. These pictures range from good quality work to detailed and amazing art.

RTE This is Art Club

By Valentino Alexandru


Valentino Alexandru, Brandon and Michael all took part in the RTE show “This is Art”. It was filmed over two days in late November and early December. Our teacher Ms Holland organised the show and brought us to the NCAD studios.


Being on RTÉ was fun. It was filmed at NCAD (National College of Art and Design) in Dublin. First, we had food and a drink. Being filmed for the first time was stressful. I was getting my lines wrong. After a few minutes, I got used to it. Then we went into the typesetting room. There we learned about the printing press and typography. Typography is how words look.


We picked words and placed metal letters to form them on the printing press. They were rolled with ink and then a piece of paper was rolled on. This is called typesetting. For the final filming session, we went to a different building in NCAD. There, we met other art students. We had food and then went to a room where other parts of the episode were being filmed. We talked to the presenter and then took pictures.


The staff were really nice and we enjoyed it. The experience was amazing and I really want to do it again. The show was called This is Art and it went out on RTE2 on Thursday the 27th of April.  I watched the show at home with my parents. It was a weird experience seeing myself on screen. It was also really cool.

VID-20221117-WA0010.mp4

Winnit O'Keefe 

2nd Year Art CBA 1 - Winnit O’Keeffe


Hello, I am an art student that has done my 2nd Year Art CBA 1 and I will be writing all about what a CBA is, how an Art CBA should be structured etc.


What is a CBA?

A CBA stands for Classroom Based Assessment, these Assessments are to give students opportunities to express their skills and what they have learned in a unique way that can’t be done with just normal pieces of work. For example some CBAs may have you demonstrate your Investigation skills or verbal skills like Science and Spanish respectively. In this case, the Art CBA helps to demonstrate your skills with different mediums (materials)


Art CBA

Theme:

Art CBAs have different themes that can be chosen, in my case the theme chosen was “Hidden”. Which meant we had to base our Art CBA around the theme of hidden. Some of you may not know how to get started with getting ideas for an Art CBA revolving around hidden which will lead me directly into my next heading.


Brainstorming:

Brainstorming is just a collection of any ideas that come to mind when you hear the main theme which in my case is “Hidden”. The structure for our brainstorming was a Mind Map which was a way to illustrate our ideas and elaborate with text. The image below was my Mind Map.



As you can see, it’s just a collection of any idea that somewhat resembles the main theme. Having loads of ideas makes it easier to find an idea you actually want to use for your Art CBA. You may also see some different Artists names and their illustrations on the right of the page which I will explain in the next heading.


Looking for Influences:

A great way to get ideas on what to do for your Art CBA is to find influences and/or inspirations. We do this by looking at Artists that we want to base our style off of. In my case I have picked two Artists, Meghan Howland and Roy Lichtenstein. Reasons on picking influences may differ. For example: I picked Meghan Howland because I really liked how she demonstrated her version of the theme “Hidden” which was by covering the characters faces, whereas I picked Roy Lichtenstein because I liked the pop colours they used in their ceramic artworks.

This means your influences don't necessarily have to be linked with the main theme but can just be anything that you like about their art that you want to incorporate into your own.


Success Criteria:

A Success Criteria is what you should aim to achieve by the end of your CBA/Project, it helps to give an idea on what to do during your CBA so you don’t get lost. The success criteria for the Art CBA was to:


Starting Point:

After brainstorming our starting point will be to look at Primary Sources relating to what we want to do with the theme “Hidden” and draw them into what we call a “Development Sheet”. A Development Sheet is a sheet with different ideas, compositions and drawing Sources in different ways. Throughout the CBA we will be making two Development Sheets.

Our first Development Sheet will just be about Primary Sources. A Primary Source is an original Object or Document. In this case it’d be a physical object that we can observe and draw. It’s a good idea to pick an idea that you can get a lot of Primary Sources for. For example I picked a mask on a human face so it’s very easy to get human Primary sources to draw. 

After we get our primary sources it’s important then to use a variety of materials. As you can see above, I have used Pencils, Pens and colouring pencils for my drawings. Being able to draw with multiple mediums makes your art stand out more. After you’re done with your drawings it’s very important to analyse your drawings and write annotations/explanations for your work. Again, if you look above you can see I have explained why I have chosen to draw whether it be to try new mediums or something else and I have added other comments. Another important thing is to NOT cross out drawings you’re not happy with. I wasn’t happy with my first portrait at the top right but instead of crossing it out you should explain why you weren’t happy with it and what you could do to make it better. This is all really important to show how your work is developing.


Focusing on Art Elements:

While you're drawing it’s a great skill to be able to focus on art elements as they are the foundations of a piece of art. For those who don’t know, Art Elements are stylistic features that help make an art piece stand out. These 7 art elements are:

Keeping these elements in mind while working on your CBA and utilising them will make your CBA even better.


Inspiration:

We were told to look at the history of masks for inspiration, this is a great idea to do if you’re still lost on what to base your Art CBA off of. This helped me a lot as while I was looking at the history of masks I got an idea to make it about Tribal Skulls as they are quite historic and Skeletal remains are quite hidden so that’s what I wanted to base my Art CBA off of. It’s also important to base your Art CBA off of something you are actually interested in doing so you can have a better time while doing it. Below will also be part of my development sheet 1 this time on Skulls as a Primary Source.

The Art Class has a lot of Goat Skulls that I could use as a Primary Source for reference. It’s also important to alter your primary source whether that be in angles or anything else to help make your Development Sheet more interesting.


Development Sheet 2:

This is the last Sheet we make before we start making our Ceramic masks. For this development sheet we start putting together our ideas from our Mind Map and Development sheet 1 to make something unique. This is where the final design of your mask will go. You can make as many mask ideas as you like during this but you must pick only one final design. These designs can be as stylised as you’d like. This is also where you will be putting your patterns and line markings that you will put on your mask. This is part of the success criteria and makes your mask more interesting, these patterns/line markings can range from shading techniques like stifling or crosshatching to something really abstract. The picture below will be my Development Sheet 2 as an example.

After you have picked your final design it is then time to have a separate sheet for the final design and fully colour it. Put in a lot of effort into this as this is what you will use to base your ceramic off of. Below will be my Final Design as an example:

After you have finished your final design on paper it is time to make it with Clay. It’s very VERY important to use your final design as a basis for your mask, the one mistake I made was that I didn’t look at my Development Sheets or final design as I made the clay mask. This made it looks different from the Final Design.

 The very simplified step by step for your Clay Mask will be to:

Here's a picture of me painting the Ceramics.

These are pictures of my finished product in Ceramic Form.

I’d like to thank you for reading and I hope that for any upcoming Art Students that you have learned something from this and will be able to make a great Art CBA 1, but remember to have fun with art! It doesn’t need to be perfect to be enjoyable. Thank you again and have a great rest of your day!

Maser Street Art Tour

By Charles O'Reilly

This year my 5th year art class went on an art trip around Dublin city centre with our teacher Ms Holland. It was a miserably wet day but the weather didn't dampen our spirits. We started off by going to see an art gallery where we met the artist Maser. Maser and his lovely wife talked to us about how he got into art, what inspired his ideas and what pushed him to pursue his passion. Later we went on an art tour around town to see all the different artists and their street art, it was so rainy and windy and cold but we had a great time.


Hugh Lane Gallery

By Pádraic Kildee Doolan

After being welcomed into the gallery by our tour guide, the exhibition we saw was called “Bones in the Attic” where we saw  the work of many contemporary female artists.  The boys found the works very interesting, and liked the fact that the main theme of the exhibition was the role of women in society and the struggles they faced and still face today.  One of the pieces that stood out to us was ‘Waiting’ by Kathy Prendergast. This installation shows women with parts of their body missing. The boys found it very interesting and all had their own takes on the possible meanings the piece could have.  Other artists that featured in the exhibition included, Rita Duffy, Dorothy Cross, Alice Maher and Jesse Jones. 


After the great tour of “Bones in the Attic” MsMcdonnell and the boys went to take a look at the Séan Scully room. The boys were fascinated by Scully’s works as they had been researching the abstract artist in class. Séan Scully grew up in Inchicore until he was five, so the lads found him much more exciting to learn about. An interesting fact is that he gave his paintings to the gallery for free and the room was built specifically for his work.

Irish Museum of Modern Art

By Pádraic Kildee Doolan

For Ms.McDonnell’s fifth year class’s second art trip, they visited the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Kilmainham. The boys got split into two groups, both seeing two different exhibitions. The group that Ms.McDonnell went with got to see an exhibition by Otolith Group Xenogenesis and Sandra went with the other half of the art class to see an exhibition called “The Narrow Gate of the Here and Now”. Both of these exhibitions were focused on the world around us and political issues in the world today. The boys saw a huge variety of different forms of art works. With videos and physical displays of some everyday objects, the lads were intrigued and involved with their tour. 


Past Pupil Francis Matthews @ The Molesworth Gallery


First Year Art

By Bien Rosales

Hello, My name is Bien Rosales and i’m a student in Drimnagh Castle Secondary that took part in Art as one of my subjects in First Year. 


Even years before I entered Drimnagh Castle Secondary I've always loved art, I've drawn on both paper and digitally. Though I'm more into digital art, it doesn’t take my interest away from paper art either.

Over the course of the year in art we have done four designs of different styles of art, which were: Op Art, Painting, Ceramics and Lino Art.


The first thing we did in art was we did Op Art, which is a form of art movement, it’s short for “Optical Art”

An illusion hand drawing, or just a hand coming out of the page drawing,



The process of the drawing wasn’t as hard as it looks and it didn’t take long for the whole class to finish. About 12 of these hand illusion drawings are still hung up on the art class’ walls today!


We then did “Ceramics”, a term used in art to transform clay into pottery by hardening it.


It was near Christmas when we started doing ceramics, so we used the clay to transform it into a Christmas tree, 

Not only that we also made Christmas related objects, such as angels, treats or decorations. These were put in the kiln and fired and glazed.

After Christmas, we started to do painting. We took a picture of random sweets (the primary source) and printed it onto a page, we then had to sketch out the sweets on an A3 page. After that, we had to paint out the paper, starting with the base, shading and then details. I really enjoyed doing painting because of how fun it was to mess around with the colours on a palette, though it was one of the longest and hardest projects, but in the end when everyone finished, it looked amazing.


Around January, we learned how to use tone, we read what it was, why we use it, the tonal scale (the black and white gradient) and it featured 2 famous artists who used them, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. W2 practiced tone on 2D shapes to make them look 3D. Using tone would’ve been an important feature for a future project.

Blind Contour drawing

We learned about the two artists, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Their style of drawing was usually simple. We first tried it by covering  our page with a paper plate and only looking at a picture of ourselves and seeing what the final result would look like, obviously not everyone was perfect, but it was a fun experience. Then we made it easier for ourselves by looking at a mirror or a picture of ourselves and being able to see the paper while drawing, but the challenge was to only make the whole portrait in just one line. I found it really interesting but stressful at the same time.

My Hero

For our final project, we started to look at our heroes. The goal was to draw a  portrait of those heroes we picked, but we had to have some experience with drawing the parts in the human head to get a fairly easier way to draw the self portrait of our heroes. We practiced drawing eyes, nose, lips and ears.


While we were learning about how to draw our heroes in a self portrait, we learned about Kehinde Wiley, who was an African American artist who spread the work of art in black people. He thought that in historical paintings only white people would’ve stood out in the crowd. So in exchange he decided to repaint white people into black people in old popular paintings. 



Gandhi by  Alwin Jobin

I chose Mahatma Gandhi because he was the freedom fighter of India 

I was born in India and he rescued India from British rule.

I chose the background of a lotus flower. Gandhi was also a Hindu  and lotus was a great example of a Hindu symbol. He fought against England in peaceful means.

Martin Luther King by Redemption Odika

I choose Martin Luther King because in the 1960s he fought through police brutality to fight for his peoples rights.Martin was an activist who became a visible spokesmen  for people of colour . Without him my people would have been treated unfairly.

Martin Luther King by Bien Rosales

Dean O Mahony

He is my favorite League of Ireland footballer

He is the captain of Pats, he plays as a central midfielder and he wears no.8

He has also played for Bohs, Peterborough United, Aberdeen and The Republic of Ireland U21

Chris is a fan favourite due to his flair/skill with the ball at his feet, he’s like the Neymar of the League of Ireland 

Dad by Aaron Gorman

I chose my dad for the Hero Portrait as he has helped me a lot through 1st Year and has inspired me to be a better person. Through the whole of 1st Year he has helped me a lot with getting adjusted to 1st Year and for the following years. I also chose him as he is a brilliant dad, who loves his sons very much.


Hampton Liu by Winnit O Keeffe

Hampton Liu is a 28 year old Fitness influencer under the brand name “Hybrid Calisthenics”, where he posts videos about Fitness Routines, giving encouragement, finding inspiration and just spreading good vibes. The reason I picked him as my hero is because he is a very encouraging person who has a positive attitude about life and the things around him. He doesn’t do any of this for money or for selfish reasons, he does all of this just to help people out. I admire people like that.



The Rock by Ryan Fish

The Rock's real name is Dwayne Johnson. He is my hero because he looks like a tough guy but he seems to be a good person. He works  hard to to keep  in shape which is important.

After learning about Kehinde Wiley, we started to draw our self portraits of our heroes. We used all our knowledge from drawing tones, and the parts of the head to make this drawing look perfect. The whole class worked on it and it was a really fun project to be doing as our final one. To make things look cooler, we made a sketch which would be used for the background later on, we then traced it on a lino and cut it out using a lino cutter. After that it was time to print it on a colored page, we rolled a color on the lino and printed it on the page, there were different mixtures of color, like red and yellow, blue and orange, green and white or black and white. When the background was finished, we stuck our hero self portraits onto them and the final products were astonishing.


To wrap things up, I really enjoyed all the projects we’ve done throughout 1st Year in Art, I really hope to look into 2nd Year and see what more amazing things await.

Interview with 6th year student & Artist Josh Salinger

Interview by Adam Sterio


I enjoy drawing people, I love to  to draw and I really enjoy  using paint and colouring pencils.


I developed an interest in Art in primary school, and then focused on it a lot in Junior Cert and progressed with it into Leaving Cert


I recently completed my leaving cert portfolio, which was on facial expressions and the focusing of expressions. I began the project in December and it has taken a number of months but I have really enjoyed the work, and I have received lots of the support from my Art teacher Ms Mc Donnell. 


I get great satisfaction from seeing it go from a sketch and progress into what it is, the finished product.


I hope to go on to college and study Art design, and animation


To work as an animator in Disney. 


I enjoy playing golf, and doing art projects at home.


Meeting new people and making friends.


I will miss the friends I have made and some of my teachers too.


We painted the wall outside the first year rooms and more recently, myself, Eldon Antonio  and others painted the new mural outside the music room. 



Virtual Art Gallery Tour 2020

Our art class was lucky enough to be invited and do a virtual tour of a gallery. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, visiting a gallery is not possible. In our virtual tour of the Hunt Museum, we had the ability to interact with each other in a virtual environment. 

The workshop takes place on the free online platform Mozilla Hubs. Students can explore and interact with virtual galleries filled with 3D objects and images. They can practice analytic, creative, and digital skills while they work together to create their own museum galleries and discover the role of the museum to educate and inspire. 

We observed and discussed the exhibits displayed through the microphone chat. Similar to a real life gallery we could get up close to the paintings and craft work that was being displayed. The atmosphere of the virtual tour was authentic as it replicated the details of a real life gallery. Overall the experience was good and it shows how people can be creative during tough times. 

This is some of the examples of art made by our first years. Read More...

This is some of the examples of art made by our second years. Read More...

This is some of the examples of art made by our third years. Read More...