This week the Art Department hosted Arts Week 2022, welcoming three professional freelance artists, to run five consecutive days of workshops. It is so important for young artists to have the opportunity to meet and work alongside professional freelance practising artists, to understand their vocation. The Art Scholars, Sixth Form artists and Year 10 GCSE Art pupils have had an incredible week of creative opportunities.
Jeanette Barnes, graduate of the Royal College of Art and teacher at the Royal Drawing School London, is known for her distinctive, expressive, large-scale cityscapes. With pupils this week Jeanette has been exploring mark making, form and composition. In their creative endeavours, pupils have been getting messy with willow charcoal and learning to explore the medium, each creating a series of lively drawings of urban structures. Portrait artist Paul Brandford, worked with A Level pupils on developing their skills of translating drawings in to paintings. The focus of our pupils on this day was absolutely incredible, resulting in such bold and confident outcomes. Paul’s own talent and skill offered such inspiration to our pupils and his references to artists such as Rembrandt and Lucien Freud were key to the learning. In contrast to the drawing and painting workshops, our Graphic Design students learned about the art of screen printing with Bristol based printmaker, Louise David. Experimentation with techniques and colour were the focus and using laser cut stencils, pupils created lively prints.
Arts Week 2022 concluded with an exhibition of pupils’ work in the gallery of the Creative Art Centre, such a great celebration of the learning and creativity explored over the five days.
