1st Years • 13 • Dublin

12-15 Category   •  2026
For our paintings, our theme was inquisitive views of nature in our urban area. To start we went outside in our school grounds and took photos of our surroundings. Then, we picked a few of our photos and sketched them using different techniques looking at different art elements. After we drafted out a few of our choices, we picked our favourite draft and used that as our painting inspiration. Before we started our final painting, we learnt all about using tones, line drawing, form, texture and much more. Then we drew our ideas, using all the different skills we had learned. We explored many different techniques when drafting our paintings. We did lots of research on our objects, adding things in that we didn’t take photos of. When we started on our compositions, we worked on our backgrounds first, starting with a wash and then layering acrylic paint on. We painted our objects, trying to make them look as real as we could, using tone to add the shadow in our paintings. To make the textures almost 3d, we used techniques such as adding glue to give it a shine, adding actual leaves and crepe paper, mixing flour and glue to make a thick paste to give it a 3d look. Some of us added pieces from magazines, or newspaper to add a collaged look. Everyone worked really hard on their paintings, and along the way we learnt so many new techniques. Overall, it was a really good experience and the paintings turned out really well. By 1st Year Student – Aoife McGloin