The Visual Arts education at Cheung Chau Government Secondary School

The Visual Arts education at Cheung Chau Government Secondary School

Vincent LEE Kwun-leung ( 李冠良 ){* Source of photo: “Dim Dim Cheung Chau”}

Miss. Winnie Choy’s art creations Miss. Winnie Choy’s art-teaching methodologies

{* Source of photos: “Dim Dim Cheung Chau” }

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The Visual Arts education at Cheung Chau Government Secondary School

The “Centenary Visual Arts Exhibition” and the “105th Anniversary Visual Arts Exhibition” of Cheung Chau Government Secondary School, which were held at Hong Kong Central Library and Hong Kong City Hall respectively, showed a great diversity of creative styles that Miss. Winnie Choy Wing-yin ( 蔡詠妍 ) has taught to the CCGSS students.

Miss. Winnie Choy’s art creations

This is an watercolour painting with the episode of fishing boats and sheds in Tai O as creative theme. Miss. Choy stressed Realism, whereas she tried her best to maintain the transparency of the sea surface by moderating the watercolour paints to be as moisturized as possible.


This is a piece of Futuristic and monochrome illustration with markers and pens as creative mediums. Miss. Choy talked about the youngsters, who survived within the realm of virtual reality, had to strictly rely on the function of computer mouses for delivering the messages of loves and cares to their companions, friends and acquaintances. All these kinds of communication norms were manipulated by the steel-made engines. Under the circumstances with no humanistic interactions, the netizens unconsciously submit themselves to the allocation tasks of the technological machineries.


This is a piece of relief and intaglio printmaking with the episode of fishing boats and sheds in Tai O as creative theme. The dawn atmosphere with hopeful colour schemes that Miss. Choy applied for the printing process create an illusion that Tai O is as splendid as an amusement park with carnivals inside for letting tourists experience the fun of boat riding.


This is a piece of relief and intaglio printmaking with the episode of a preserved fish stall inside a Food Market in Tai O as creative theme. The figures, fishes and facilities were not portrayed in an absolutely realistic manner. Rather, Miss. Choy made all these kinds of human interactions to be “vague impressions” within the red, orange and yellow background. The brushstrokes for expressing these “impressions” were as similar as “rough sketches”.


This is a piece of relief and intaglio printmaking with the episode of five fishing boats as creative theme. Miss. Choy adopted the dark red bold strokes for describing the boats within the yellow, green and blue background. The boats gave art lovers an illusion that they were created by traditional Chinese paper-cutting methods.

Miss. Winnie Choy’s art-teaching methodologies at CCGSS

The “still life drawing” (or the “plant drawing” according to the HKEAA version) was an important chapter in the former HKCEE Art curriculum. Miss. Winnie Choy spent a large amount of time making comparisons among the “still lives” different students had portrayed. From each student’s piece, she pointed out which fruit or vegetable illustrated the best realistic visual effect. Then, she pointed out which item(s) had to be aesthetically refined or modified for presenting better visual effect(s). Miss. Choy also projected the reference drawing works from other secondary schools for giving students more ideas in terms of how to accomplish the notion of “Realism”.


For the Junior Form students, Miss. Choy divided a photo of a CCGSS campus episode into twenty onwards square checks. Then, each student was responsible for one particular square check and had to re-portray the contents within this check by using oil pastels.

Miss. Choy does not mind the objects that some students portrayed are Expressionistic, instead of Realistic, in vision.


Miss. Choy thinks that, by integrating the oil-pastel checks together, art lovers can perceive a sense of “aesthetic humors” (qu wei, 趣味 ) in which a collaborative art creation can accommodate different brushstroke styles and different colour schemes. The idea of “aesthetic humors” originates from Mr. John Li Tung-keung ( 李東強 ), who has served at CUHK Department of Fine Arts as a drawing, Chinese-ink figure painting and printmaking instructor for many years.


Miss. Choy’s expertise is “Graphic Design”, whereas she encourages most of her Art students at CCGSS to enroll this paper for their HKCEE Art and HKDSE Visual Arts examinations. Art students from CCGSS accomplish to obtain distinguished grades due to their ingenious sensitivity towards the principles of designs.

Miss. Choy puts a prior emphasis on the studies of “typographies”. She encourages her students to practice Western ink-pen calligraphies through the visualization of poet writings. Then, her students can move on to create their fonts based on either their unique styles or the given criterions from the assigned design projects.


During her Art lessons, Miss. Choy regularly projects her image collections which are related to the trendy product or advertisement designs within the creative field of Hong Kong.

Under a criterion that her students manage to re-portray various types of typographies with ease; Miss. Choy encourages them to focus on brand images, functions of products, decorative patterns, iconographies, fashion trends, cosmetic trends, facial appearances of fashion models, spatial distributions, chrominance, luminance and advertising focal perspectives.


From this eco-friendly bag with a tropical lady selling the remarkable lipstick product, it shows Miss. Choy’s anticipation that her students can realistically, vividly and pragmatically portray what they see from the daily examples of fashion magazines or MTR advertisements even though they are using traditional drawing and painting tools as mediums without much dependence on “Photoshop” or “Illustrator” technologies.


Miss. Choy would spare some lessons for students to individually portray their favourite campus-life episodes at their Alma Mater, such as the inter-house sports activities. She requests students to begin from the stage of colour-pencil drawing first, which enables them to thoroughly study the contrasts between brightness and shadows, as well as the way for rendering with the harmonious transformation of chrominances.


This is an awesome piece of drawing which Miss. Choy’s student vividly portrayed the culture of teacher-student basketball competitions at the playground outside the colonial-styled “Campus A”.


Miss. Choy stresses the training of portrait drawing. During the “CCGSS Centenary Visual Arts Exhibition” at Hong Kong Central Library on 4 June 2008, there was a student who portrayed Lydia Shum ( 沈殿霞 ), a renowned actress from TVB JADE Channel, with soft pastels as creative mediums. This student successfully highlighted Lydia Sum’s facial feature as a “happy fruit” for providing audiences with entertainments through comedies.

Lydia Shum died in February 2008. Her daughter, Joyce Cheng ( 鄭欣宜 ), decides to maintain a fit appearance and pursue the dream for being a pop singer.


Miss. Choy is keen at watercolour painting. From this student piece during the “CCGSS 105th Anniversary Visual Arts Exhibition” at Hong Kong City Hall on 28 June 2013, it was seen that Miss. Choy taught her student how to portray the sea surface to be tranquil and transparent by moderating the watercolour paints to be as moisturized as possible.


There’s a paper called “Visual Presentation of a Theme” from the former HKCEE Art and the current HKDSE Visual Arts examination curriculums. Apart from a prior emphasis on “design” training, Miss. Choy allows some of her students, who have imaginative thoughts and can manage the creation of “narrative paintings”, to enroll this paper.

Miss. Choy guides students to think about the impossibilities, as every kind of fantasy episodes from one’s subconscious mind or daydreaming experiences can be exaggerated as concreted visual iconographies on a piece of “narrative painting”. Even though the stories are illogical or non-scientific; such creative spirits correspond with the philosophy of Sigmund Fraud, as well as the Expressionistic emphasis of Marc Chagall, Max Beckmann, George Grosz or Salvador Dali.


Miss. Choy thought that, it was necessary for her to let her students grasp the tactics of having their paintings being valued by the curators of contemporary (or “avant-garde”) art market after graduation. Miss. Choy guided her students to imitate the smiling figures from Yue Minjun ( 岳敏君 )’s oil paintings by giving them renewed dressing codes and background sceneries. This series of “Yue Minjun” representations was shown during the “CCGSS 105th Anniversary Visual Arts Exhibition” at Hong Kong City Hall.


This student successfully integrated the smiling face of Yue Minjun’s figure painting with the body of a student who upheld the “Campus A” of CCGSS and was surrounded by floral blossoms. At the top of the painting, there was a horizontal signboard with “CCGSS is my home” as slogan, whereas the two official badges of CCGSS were drawn at the left-hand side and right-hand side of the slogan.


Miss. Choy hopes to foster students with both awareness and practical skills on interior designs as well. From this watercolour piece, it is seen that Miss. Choy trains her students how to realistically portray furnitures and electrical appliances from our domestic environments as an elementary stage for handling with the perspective drawing based on “focal points”.


Miss. Choy guided her students to create their ideal DIY houses by using clays and craft papers to construct the mini groceries, mini cuisines, mini bakeries, mini cafes and mini vegetable markets. All these helped her students manage the skills of three-dimensional model creations once being assigned to deal with the interior-design tasks.


One of the “Ideal DIY Houses” series during the “CCGSS Centenary Visual Arts Exhibition” at Hong Kong Central Library on 4 June 2008


Managing the notions of Xie He’s “Six Rules” ( 謝赫六法 ) from the Eastern Jin Dynasty, some CCGSS students portrayed the Chinese landscape paintings in a self-expressive (yibi, 意筆 ) style.


In April 2014, Chan Wai Yin ( 陳慧妍 ), a HKDSE Visual Arts student at CCGSS, obtained a Champion from “The Wharf Hong Kong Secondary School Art Competition 2014-15“. This achievement was reported by “Hong Kong Economic Journal” ( 信報 ).


"He and I" Artist: Chan Wai Yin (CCGSS) Award: Champion in "The Wharf Hong

Kong Secondary School Art Competition 2014-15"

Other award: "Nominator Award - Champion" Winner: Miss. Choy Wing-yin (CCGSS)

* Hyperlinks of news report by "Hong Kong Economic Journal" ( 信報 ): https://iknow.hkej.com/php/article.detail.php?ai

d=14839

http://www1.hkej.com/dailynews/arts/article/1030756/我與「他」

https://iknow.hkej.com/php/article.detail.php?aid=14839

https://iknow.hkej.com/php/article.detail.php?aid=14839

http://www1.hkej.com/dailynews/arts/article/1030756/%E6%88%91%E8%88%87%E3%80%8C%E4%BB%96




Creative idea:

Chan Wai Yin fostered a keen interest in painting, craft-making and other types of art creations since she was very young. She has an ingenious sensitivity towards colours. Chan is well-trained with professional oil-painting techniques. From her awarded piece, she delicately portrayed the vibrancies of the draperies from the child's clothes, as well as the sweet smiling face of the baby child who slept within his grandfather's embracement. Chan vividly expressed the sentimental connections between the baby child and the grandfather.

* Hyperlink of competition news from Times Square: http://www.timessquare.com.hk/tch/

event_detail.php?event=213


During the "CCGSS 105th Anniversary Visual Arts Exhibition" at Hong Kong City Hall, there was a 1950s-born CCGSS alumnus (Right 1) who contributed two monumental Chinese paintings as exhibits for a support to his Alma Mater.


Even though this CCGSS alumnus was older than Miss. Winnie Choy, his participation showed that he acknowledged the long-sighted ideal of current CCGSS educators in prospering the Visual Arts education.


From the two masterpieces of this 1950s-born CCGSS alumnus, no one could predict that he could harmoniously integrate the "Campus A" and the playground with the awesome atmospheric strata and the self-expressive trees in accordance with the ancient literati-art traditions. Above the "Campus A", the leafs fabricated a vision of "moisturized ink leisure" (mo yi, 墨意 ).

Art & Photos

The Visual Arts education at Cheung Chau Government Secondary School