The Bluefish Fine Art Packs provide the basis for a challenging range of class activities related to looking at paintings and photographs. Aimed at either secondary or tertiary level of art education, they require students to interact with each other and to respond creatively and critically to visual stimulus. Each task encourages a questioning approach and offers a range of activities to develop critical awareness and understanding.
The packs aim to develop:

• communication skills through discussion and debate
• critical skills through selection and analysis
• creative skills through written and practical activities.

Within each pack, the tasks are intended to be as flexible as possible. They can be used:

• as whole-class activities, with the teacher working as a facilitator
• as self-directed tasks for small groups of students
• as contextual research/extension tasks for individual students.

THEMES AND FOCUS

Each pack aims to encourage understanding of how ideas, feelings and meanings can be conveyed and interpreted in images. Through themed tasks, students explore how different styles and genres of painting have developed and how images relate to the time in which they were created.

• In Faces the themes are style, emotion, time and women
  
  
• In Still life the themes are style, angle, composition and culture/lifestyle
  
  
• In Surfaces and textures the themes are style, physicality, action and contrast
  
  
• In Colour the themes are style, temperature, saturation and symbolism
  
  
• In Pattern the themes are style, variety/difference, shape and mood
  
  
• In Figures the themes are style, routine, balance/weight and interaction
  
  
• In Perspective the themes are style, distance/proximity, viewpoint and focus.

For each theme there are four different types of task: Arrange, Discuss, Write and Paint:

Arrange
Students are asked to arrange six paintings in a specific order or grouping. The task involves looking closely at each painting, identifying relationships, connections and similarities and arranging the paintings through a process of negotiation.

Discuss
Students are asked to respond verbally to a deliberately contentious statement and to reach a consensus through discussion and debate. In doing so, they consider their own views on issues raised by the paintings.

Write
The focus here is on imaginative verbal response to the images. Students are encouraged to express themselves in a range of writing styles and formats, including poetry and prose.

Paint
Students are required to produce practical work that explores the dynamic of visual language.