Mar 04, 2024
A look inside my school workshops
As I have mentioned in my blog previously, I feel privileged to be regularly asked to give workshops in local schools. I am often asked about these, so I thought I’d give you all a little insight into what these entail.
The type of workshop I do, depends on the age of the children usually. For my last workshop at Orchard Manor in Dawlish I was working with children aged 11 – 12 years so as they were a little older, the workshop was centred around creating their own paintings, with their own cast of characters, based loosely around one of my paintings. For this workshop we looked at my painting A Good Catch, which features the Teignmouth lighthouse, the iconic Ness cliff, The Ness pub and Inn, and all the usual characters you’d expect to see in one of my paintings!
First of all we look at the composition of my painting, the colours used and how I’ve created perspective. We think about the characters I’ve depicted in this picture and all the reoccurring characters that feature in my other works. I ask the children to think about what characters they might like to have in their painting. I also talk about artistic licence. All my paintings represent ‘real’ scenes, but I of course use ‘artistic license’ to depict the scenes in a personal and unique way, so I encourage the children to express themselves, their individuality, and their own perspectives through their art work. Then we got painting! Look at some of the amazing work that was created! It never ceases to amaze me the level of creativeness and talent that lies within the children.
I also do author workshops with younger children and have been all around the work reading my stories to children from 2 years – 11 years. We learn how to draw Goose and create our own stories together so they become authors and illustrators for the day!
If you’d like to book me for a future workshop, please ask your school to email me at [email protected] with all the details (name of school, age of children, potential dates etc) and I’ll liaise with them directly.
