Art and Design

Whether specialising in drawing, painting, graphic design, digital photography, collage, textiles or sculpture, most of our workshops begin by selecting a topic within the pupils coursework or a curriculum based project. There are many art and design based workshops that we can offer which are specifically planned to fit in with your year plan.

An example of this is a workshop with year 5 pupils during their school Arts Week. The overall theme was Observational Drawing, and involved a number of drawing tasks over two full days. The workshop introduction involved looking at formal elements such as line, tone, texture, shape, form and colour. A still life of fruit and vegetables using 2B pencils was then developed further through the use of vibrant pastel for colour tonal drawing. The second day was devoted to portraits and self-portraits using a range of media.

Looking at shape and form line drawings were first produced.

Patricia demonstrated how to achieve shape, tone, texture and mix colours using pastels, this allowed the pupils to confidently progress in creating colourful still life drawings.

Using pastels to achieve blending and render shape to the fruit along with highlights for tonal range.

pastel still life drawings

Two examples of fruit and vegetables still life drawings using chalk pastels.

portraits

Using small mirrors and 2B pencils the pupils were asked to produce line drawings of themselves, aiming to get a true likeness by concentrating on face shape, eye shape and hairstyle. The pupils then produced a portrait drawing of the person opposite.

Using a digital camera, photographs were taken of each pupil and then evaluation and discussion was used to compare the portraits and techniques used. This then proceeded onto the final drawing task were all the learning was applied to a portrait using a range of different mediums for each quarter section.

Folding the A3 paper after drawing the initial face shape and main features gave the four sections to be used for each medium used.

Section self-portraits showing various mediums used.