Every Drawing Tells a Story.

The Leventhorpe Big Draw event is running for a whole week and has been planned by the art department teachers to celebrate the visual images conjured up in classic children's stories. The art rooms are full of story related objects and all year groups have been drawing, creating and imagining the objects, places and characters found in books.

Year 12 exam work in progress.

I tentatively share this work as they are early studies from two of our AS students. Their use and exploration of media leads the investigations. The fresh attention to detail gives a pure and beautiful quality to the sketches The charcoal birds relate to the theme of migration.

Embelish and Adorn

Cultures from across the globe have become the starting point for my year 10's next project. Students have been selecting the rich visual resources found in non western cultures. They have  been researching the way in which celebrations and customs from various cultures change their appearance to reflect a belief or tradition.

The final piece of this unit of work will be to create a clay relief which is an individual interpretation of a students chosen culture. It will have an emphasis on pattern, colour and decoration.

This weeks task involved working in teams towards a common purpose- to work on a model to paint and style them before taking a photograph of the results. They were given a jumbled box of fabric, decorative objects, images, face paints and a camera. The students worked with real maturity they were all immediately engaged and worked hard within a time frame to produce these stunning results.  

Day of the dead.

Asian Henna

Venetian Carnival

Venetian Carnival

Street Art Workshop

Sixth form Art students spent a full day with Karim Samuels from Street Art London.

 The day began with an illustrated talk followed by practical workshop in the use of stencils.

Students started the process by using photo shop to convert a chosen image to a black and white outline. Choosing a suitable image that would work as a cut stencil was key to the success of the final artwork.
The cutting of each stencil needed accuracy and concentration before finally getting to the more fun spray painting part of the process. 

This was done outside with specialised spay paints which are made from sugar gum. The colours Karim had selected for the students to use were bright and tactile. Discussion's of how to create eye catching combinations helped students to make decisions and create funky bold images on a variety of surfaces. They used canvas, corrugated card board and coloured paper to work on and also painted their own backgrounds as the stencilled images were used to create multiple layers and textures.

The students were reluctant to stop working and many spent extra time working at lunch. It definitely got their creative juices flowing and the teaching, guidance and working knowledge of Karim left the students truly inspired.

Street Art London provide facinating walking tours of Graffiti in London. Click here to go to their website.

The BIG DRAW

A day long event when 400 students and staff kicked off their shoes and created over 60 metres of dynamic drawings on the theme of 'Its Our World'.

World music and atmospheric lighting in the main school hall helped to create 'drawing zones'. Three large circles of paper provided central worlds from which lengths of paper were rolled out across the floor and even up the walls. Each length had either the theme of plastic throwaway objects which are harmful to the environment; or natural forms, leaves and flowers collected from around our school. All art classes were merged throughout the day with, at times, ninety students working within the space. 

The opportunity to take drawing outside of a usual class room environment challenged classes to build on their previous practice of observational drawing. The success of this communal event is evident not only in the high standard of the participants' drawings but also in their obvious enjoyment of the task. The students' individual focus and absorption resulted in truly self guided work. The art teachers could also just join in and draw.

The Year 12 Art students became 'BIG DRAW Creatives' for the day and worked tirelessly, either on their own drawings, or to help other younger students. In particular they used black shoe polish as a drawing medium to break up the space and connect sections of smaller objects.

The BIG DRAW Creatives.

The Big Draw-Its Our World

The Big Draw is a national event run by The Campaign for Drawing. The Leventhorpe art department will be holding an event this year as part of the national scheme. 

Click here to go to The Big Draw Website.

In preparation we are getting the creative juices flowing by using the theme of It's Our World as our starting point across all year groups this term. Huge still life displays will be taking over the art rooms. The exciting task of sourcing, collecting and arranging objects for three art class rooms has already begun.

So how could this theme be interpreted? The following questions may provide some ideas for objects to draw and areas to investigate.

What objects and possessions do we have to shape our world?

How do we all view our environment?

How does this affect us?

Who creates the environment in which we live and work?

How do artists reflect or change the world around them?

What may happen to our world if we don't look after it?

During a windy beach walk this landscape caught my imagination and touches on some of these questions.

Driftwood. Brancaster Beach, Norfolk.

Click here to go to a website for more info on celebrating the environment through art.

Butterfly World

The whole of year seven visited Butterfly World in Hertfordshire.

  

On the 12th and 13th May, we took our Year 7's to Butterfly World in St Albans. We were very lucky with the weather and managed to enjoy both days without getting wet, with the students producing some beautiful study sketches.

We gave each student a piece of A3 paper and told them to fold the paper to create a constantine styled booklet. When opened up the students would be left with a full A3 page study sheet.

A students sketch of the Giant Ant!

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Miss White leading the observational drawing of the ant.

At the end of the students (and staff!) were lucky enough to be involved in insect handling. This involved stick insects, giant African snails and cockroaches!

During the insect handling we were able to see where the life of a butterfly begins. We were even lucky enough to see some breaking out of their chrysalis'

During our visit we also walked around the decorated, unsual, beautiful gardens, where the students could continue with their observational drawings.