Art Workshops Archives

St Mary and St John Catholic Primary School

11th November 2021 By EMELBI

Procreate Portrait Workshops

I recently had the pleasure of running a weeks worth of workshops with all the children in St Mary and St John Catholic Primary School in Wigan. Working with Reception children, right through to Year 6, we used an app called ‘Procreate‘ on the Apple iPad. Many of the children had never seen or worked with Procreate before so there was a steep learning curve regarding some of the technical aspects of using the app. I am pleased to say that they all took to it like ducks to water and the strength of creativity speaks for itself.

The project was tailored to look at self portrait illustration, to think about the structure of the face and what it is that makes us look like us. Working form their own photographs that they took themselves, the children explored their face structure, examining strong lines and also the negative spaces in the construction of their imagery. Working over multiple layers they eventually finished off by delving into the world of colour where we discussed colour palettes and what sort of hues worked well together. The emphasis was always based around the notion that ‘less is more’. This was a deliberate exercise throughout the workshops, simplifying the process of the illustration in order that the students ended up with the strongest lines. There are key, dominant marks that are the critical elements that make up the character of the face. They inform the viewer about certain expressions and the overall personality of the portrait that they are viewing. The children went through the process of learning to identify these elements and incorporating them into their illustrations.

The students and staff at this school were a delight to work with. I was with them for a whole week and was able to work with every student in every class. The work that they produced is exemplary. Fun, bold, really exciting and full of energy.

Years 5 and 6 also got to work with me in the production of some hand drawn portrait illustrations. They photographed their finished line images on the iPad and worked into them digitally using and app called PIXLR.

Procreate is an app that runs on the Apple iPad. It is an exceptional bit of kit used by many illustrators working in the creative industry. It is intuitive, powerful and exciting to use.

Check out some of the work below from each of the year groups and also some photos of the children working.

RECEPTION

YEAR 1

YEAR 2

YEAR 3

YEAR 4

YEAR 5

YEAR 6

The Beautiful Mundane Project – Birkby Junior School

19th May 2021 By EMELBI

This was such a fun project with years 4 and 5 at Birkby Junior School. All the children were introduced to the process of making striking digital graphics from really basic digital photography.

STAGE ONE – THE PHOTOGRAPHY

Using iPads, the children were encouraged to take a series of photographs of every-day, mundane objects that would usually seem humdrum or of a dull subject matter. Things like light switches, radiators, air vents, skirting boards etc.

STAGE TWO – THE IMAGE TREATMENT

Using various apps on the iPad, the children then took the images through a series of treatments in order to enhance the imagery to make it a little less dull, introducing textures, colour overlays and light leaks to name but a few.

STAGE THREE – THE TEXT LAYOUT and GRAPHIC DESIGN

The children were then asked to produce a poster for a mock local event using one of the images that they had made as the background. They were given the choice of either:

1. A Music Festival

2. A Technology Convention (Tech Con)

3. A Horticultural Show (Flower Show)

4. An Art Exhibition

Using the same apps that they had used in the creation of their graphics; but this time using a different set of tools within those apps, the children created some wonderful work based on these mock events.

The graphics that they produced and the subsequent posters are full of colour and energy. They have vibrancy, great structure and beautiful detail. The whole workshop was to show that you can create beautiful graphics from bland imagery with a bit of imagination and technical know-how. The workshops were a great success and the children really enjoyed that whole process.

Best comment: “I didn’t know that you could create amazing things from nothing!”

IMAGE MANIPULATION DAY

GRAPHIC DESIGN DAY

Ash Croft Primary Academy – Digital Lift Off Day

18th May 2021 By EMELBI

In this recent workshop, the year 5 and 6 children at Ash Croft Primary Academy made some strong graphics from hands on illustrative beginnings. Starting with their own portrait photographs as reference material, they made some detailed portrait illustrations of themselves using biro pens on heavy cartridge paper. Exploring a series of techniques, these images were then worked into with thicker pens honing the major detail. Special attention was paid to the areas that make characters and features stand out.

Once this stage was finished the pupils then photographed their images using an iPad and worked into them digitally using various creative apps, exploring and experimenting with textures, colour overlays, light bleeds and numerous other layers. The outcomes were a series of strong digital graphics based on their initial drawings.

The school and staff were fantastic and a pleasure to work with.

Hands Up For Equality – Silkstone Primary School

24th November 2020 By EMELBI

Here is an art project recently undertaken by the Year 3 children at Silkstone Primary School in Barnsley. They created some interesting illustrations based on ‘Equality’ using the outline of their own arms. The children made their images using words/text to form some strong detail for the inside of their arms. Adding various textures with pens, and colour from a limited colour palette, they came up with these striking graphics. The limited colour palette was used to form a modicum of uniformity throughout the images. The colours are also based on the school logo. This was a great project and I love the energy in the resulting imagery. They’re all so very unique.

Silkstone Primary School was a lovely school to work in. The staff and children were brilliant.

Unique and Equal – Silkstone Primary School

24th November 2020 By EMELBI

These self-portraits were made by the year 4 children at Silkstone Primary School in Barnsley. This project was a creative experience that brought about some inspiring results. Based on their own portrait images, the children explored the line and structure of their own faces, through a series of drawing techniques. These techniques were devised to examine parts of the face that form the true character of who they are. By paying careful attention to the dominant lines, shading and using a limited colour palette, they formed these portraits over the duration of the workshop. It was brilliant to see how these characters emerged over the course of the day. I was particularly impressed with the strong and bold marks made during the painting process. The best comment of the day: “I didn’t know that I was good at art until today.”

I had a great couple of days working at Silkstone Primary School. A smashing little school. The staff and children were fab.

Codsall Middle School – Portrait Illustration Workshop 2018

7th December 2018 By EMELBI

Here are some of the images that the pupils at Codsall Middle School in Wolverhampton produced during a recent portrait illustration workshop. The images are derived from their own portrait photographs. They learned to look for dominant parts of their features to pull out their true character. These are a handful of the images that were produced on the day. It was hard to pick the images for this blog as they were all so very good. There were 138 year 6 pupils that I worked with on the day. The workshops were a lot of fun and I always love to see young people creating great imagery and learning new skills. I’m sure you will agree that these images are just fab.

Gomersal Primary School – Creative Workshop 2016 #2

16th December 2016 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

This has been a wonderful project where the children have explored a wide range of mediums including photography, pen line portrait illustration, textured mark making with a variety of tools, paint blending experimentation on canvas, digital illustration and layering techniques and then bringing all these things together for the final pieces. The finished artworks are absolutely fabulous and so wonderfully individual. It was a pleasure to work with such a great bunch of talented young artists.

Gomersal Primary School – Creative Workshop 2016

12th December 2016 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Here are some of the images that have been created by the children at Gomersal Primary School in recent creative workshops. These will be added to the canvases that they have been working on for the last few weeks. Can’t wait to see the finished items.

I really love their use of blended digital textures incorporating their hand drawn portraits. Brilliant creativity.

Birkby Junior School – Personal Story Telling Project

22nd September 2016 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

This was a super day long project working with a group of talented creative children on a personal story telling project. The artwork produced was towards part of a community art exhibition with many other schools being involved. The children rolled out a large piece of paper across the school hall floor and each of them worked on multiple areas of the paper creating illustrative self portraits of themselves and embellishing the portraits with images that related to them and their lives.

Afterwards the children extensively photographed the images that they had made using ipads. That done, they further worked on their imagery digitally manipulating the images using specific apps in the ipad until they had a made a large amount of usable media. The resulting posters were the results of their hard work. A super project with a fab bunch of children.

Here are some photographs from the workshop.

Gomersal Primary School – Experimental Portrait Workshop

10th December 2015 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

This was a really fun and creative art club. From large A2 printed portrait photographs the children traced their own images paying particular attention to the shapes that exist within the human face. This made for some really lovely and unusual drawings. The second stage was to make another tracing, but this time from the initial line drawing so that there was some extra degradation of form though this process.

Using a limited palette of colours, the children then inked the second drawing by almost block filling the shapes that they had discovered within the lines of their drawings.

I love how these beautiful images started to appear on the paper. We later scanned the images and went on to do some digital image manipulation with them. Great fun.

Line and Ink Work

DIGITAL MANIPULATION

WORKSHOP PHOTOS

Shelly First School – Digital Urban Mural – Digital Illustration Workshops.

5th November 2015 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Using Dazzle 03 pupils created funky character designs to use in the production of a Digital Urban Mural. Further graphic experimentation had them exploring various tools within the Dazzle 03 software package where they used multiple layers and learned to transfer images from one document to another. The pupils then combined many graphic elements to form the finished artwork exploring colour, texture, image placement, small graphic additions and much more. I love how busy these images are and how they have come together as a group of images.

Shelly First School – IF I WERE KING OR QUEEN – Digital Illustration Workshops.

3rd July 2015 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

This was a fun project with Shelly First School where the children got to make King and Queen portraits out of their own faces as part of a whole schools creative arts week. The theme for the art produced during the weeks creative activities was all based around and celebrating the fact that Queen Elizabeth II will become our longest-reigning British monarch on 9 September 2015. A massive amount of artwork was produced during the workshops and a lot of fun was had along the way. Here are a few from the pile. I think they all look positively regal.

Gomersal Primary School – Digital Portrait and Digital Urban Graphics Workshop

10th May 2015 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Working with KS2 art club I did a quick photo shoot with the children during their first session to get some source material for their illustrations.

Once that was done we loaded all the images into the computer and started the creative process.
Using Dazzle 3 the children were shown how to use the different layers to derive illustrated images from the photographs. They were then encouraged to experimented with colour to create their finished portraits.

Once these initial images had been finished I wanted the children to do something different with their portrait images. We looked at further developing the children’s ability to manipulate their original images in Dazzle 3. Using different layering techniques and a bank of texture images, the children added experimental textures and
graphics to form their final piece of work, inspired by the urban graphics that are akin to my style of work. Here are some of the final images…
Wonderful work I’m sure you will agree!

Digital Urban Graphics

A mixture of photographic and illustrated materials.

Gomersal Primary School – Funky Character Designs

19th March 2015 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

A fun workshop working with Key Stage 2 children exploring drawing skills and character development. The children got to try many new drawing skills and techniques before starting on their final images. They were also able to experimented with vibrant coloured inks trying out different mark making techniques before adding the fine detail with POSCA pens once the ink had dried. I love the energy in the finished artworks. They are all very bold, bright and a lot of fun.

Rowley Lane JIN School : Digital Urban Illustration Workshop

15th March 2015 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Using Dazzle 3, the children at Rowley Lane JIN School explored portrait illustration using multiple digital layers. When they had finished their main images derived from their own photo’s, they made tome funky textured canvases in which to place their illustrated selves. The workshop was a lot of fun and their finished artwork is just super. I love the expressions and colour work.

Salendine Nook High School – ‘I CAN’ Street Graphics Project.

7th August 2014 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

In 2013, Salendine Nook High School won the Guardian Newspaper’s ‘School We’d Like’ competition and was awarded £5000 in prize money to revamp the Blue Tunnel, which is a key linking walkway between different buildings in the school. See the initial post from The Guardian… The Guardian – Salendine Nook: graffiti art project transforms old walkway.

I was approached by the school in the summer of 2013 and was asked to facilitate a creative project consisting of a series of workshops based around the title ‘I CAN’. These workshops began in autumn term 2013 and ran through to March 2014.

The initial workshops explored the history and culture of street art and graffiti and looked at the myriad of artists whose work adorns the street of the world’s urban spaces. Particular focus was placed upon methods, techniques, colour use, image placement and characteristics concerning each individual artist’s approach and style.
We looked at everything from the huge typographic scrawls and intricate lettering styles of graffiti and the continued development and evolution of graffiti culture, to Wheat Paste posting, the Knit The City phenomenon, Banksy, The London Police, Shepard Fairey and many more.

The creative workshops were designed to produce a range of strong graphics, which were either hand drawn, painted, developed from photographic elements, made using collage techniques and indeed a mixture of all these modes. Strong emphasis was placed on different drawing techniques designed to loosen up the creative process and produce an unexpected quirkiness in the resulting graphics.

Students also explored the use of the light box to trace images in order to develop quick and strong graphic styles and to experiment with composition. There was also an emphasis on the significance of mark making, constructing textures using paint splats, printing with inked bubble wrap and other interesting found materials.

Sponged ink marks and small hand drawn elements like arrows, swirls, cross-hatching and all sorts of shapes and patterns were created in the exploratory process.

Out of the mass of graphics that were produced in the workshops, the students started to get a real and definite idea about which images they wanted to use in their final artworks.

The imagery was then scanned at high resolution and prepared for layering and colouring using Photoshop CS6. This allowed the creative process to be further investigated resulting in the impacting and beautiful graphics that were produced in the student’s final pieces.

The project was a wonderful journey of creativity from beginning to end and a lot of fun was had along the way.

I think the resulting artworks speak for themselves.

Check out the Guardian article here… The Guardian – How street art can boost learning and community engagement in schools.

This was a super project commissioned by the Guardian and funded by Zurich Municipal.

Rowley Lane JIN School : Drawing – Digital Illustration – Image Manipulation – App Creativity

20th June 2014 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

This was a lovely project at Rowley Lane. The children got to create lots of different illustrations using portrait photography as their starting point. Using textures, graphics and creative tablet apps to further manipulate the images, the year 2 – 6 children had some really brilliant ideas and moved between the creative platforms as if it were second nature.
The staff were really friendly and helpful too. I have always enjoyed working with this school.

Check out some of their artwork below.

Bradford Academy – Hometeam (AVC) Graphics Project

13th June 2014 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Working as Artist in Residence with young people at Bradford Academy recently in the production of funky graphics across four large circular boards. The design challenge was based on the Academy Value Contract (AVC) that students agree to adhere to. It is always great fun working at this school. Both staff and Students are equally enthusiastic for the creative process. All artwork has been digitally reproduced and is now displayed in the school.

Academy Value Contract

What will it look like, sound like and feel like if all learners from BA work/play safe physically?

We will have the maturity to self evaluate our actions. We will not discriminate against other members of the Academy and we will be responsible for our actions emotionally and physically.

What will it look like, sound like and feel like if all learners from BA work/play fair?

We will be fair, respectful and make sure everyone is valued in the school community. We will ensure everyone is motivated and be part of a team. We will also be given opportunities and be equally supported.

What will it look like, sound like and feel like if all learners from BA work/play safe emotionally?

We will not judge others for their individuality and we will respect everyone’s opinions and thoughts by treating everyone how we would like to be treated.

What will it look like, sound like and feel like if all learners from BA work/play hard?

We will, to the best of our ability, give 100% effort with pride and enthusiasm. This will help us to find our personal balance between working, playing and relaxing in order to reach our full potential.

The Finished Graphics

Gomersal Primary School – Just Draw

6th March 2014 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

JUST DRAW

I have recently been working with a fabulous set of key stage 1 children at Gomersal Primary School.
Together we have been exploring all sort of drawing techniques and having a lot of fun with creativity.

Here are a handful of images that have been produced over the past few weeks. There have been literally hundreds of drawings made, all of which have been amazing.

PORTRAITS

BUGS

‘I Can’ Project – Salendine Nook High School, Huddersfield.

5th March 2014 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Emerging artwork and graphics from the ‘I Can’ blue tunnel project at Salendine Nook High School, Huddersfield. There are some fabulous images being created, both in the form of digital graphics and hand drawn illustrations. I’m working with a great set of students who are producing some outstanding artwork in this urban street art regeneration project. More to come soon…

Gomersal Primary School – Gomersal Kingdom Project

20th February 2014 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Gomersal Kingdom Project

This was a fab project where a group of key stage one children got to
explore drawing and painting techniques using a variety of different mediums.
Exploratory drawing, fun with paint, charcoal sketching,
felt tip creativity and much more.
Making up animals, bizarre creatures and characters that one
might find at large in the Gomersal Kingdom.

We had a fabulous art room to work in!

GCSE and AS Level Art Graphics

10th October 2013 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Here is an article written by Hazel Saxelby, a teacher whom I have work closely with over the past few years at Batley Girls’ High School and Visual Arts College.

‘Graphic Artist Mike Barrett (www.emelbi.com) returned again in 2013 to support our students with their coursework and exam projects. Mike is one of our ‘family of artists’ who has worked closely with staff and students to extend their design skills and develop their use of CAD, specifically using Adobe Photoshop. As a result of him returning year on year to the school, Mike’s extensive expertise is being embedded, in his absence, into our day to day teaching and we are finding that these skills can be passed on to students even more effectively.

Last year, he worked with both key stage 4 & 5 Art Graphics students. The GCSE students benefitted from Mike’s creativity and support as they tackled the controlled assessment exam. Each of the students approached the unit in their own way and developed exciting, personal ideas with professional results. Some students innovatively used new media and
technology, such as smartphones and Instagram to capture and begin developing their own imagery.’

Read the rest of the article here… http://www.batleygirls.co.uk/3036-2/

Pupil Referral Unit – Digital Illustration Workshops

28th August 2013 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

I have recently been working with the Pupil Referral Unit at Bradley, Huddersfield, delivering a series of digital illustration workshops using photographic manipulation and computer aided illustrative techniques. The children created some brilliant images. Here are some of the portrait illustrations from the workshops. Some lovely work and some great expressions!

Whitechapel C of E Primary School – MONSTERS and HEROES

22nd August 2013 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Character Illustration workshop with Key Stage 1 pupils at Whitechapel Primary School.

This was a fantastic project from beginning to end. The children worked extremely hard and were diligent throughout. We also had a lot of fun in the process.

We set out to create some characters based on Heroes and Monsters. (I say we, because I joined in also).
The children came up with numerous ideas using Biro pens and A4 paper. They drew an immense amount of material and it was great to listen to some of the narratives that had begun to form based around the wild and wonderful characters that were taking shape.

The tricky part of the project was translating their favourite images from A4 paper onto A1 card in order for it to be painted. I was absolutely flabbergasted at the ease with which they were able to achieve this and in such a short space of time.

The paints came out and there was soon a hive of activity as colour brought extra depth to each of the children’s designs. At times there was such concentration in the classroom that you could have heard a pin drop.

This was a lovely school to work with. Fab staff and the children were brilliant. The results of their efforts are marvellous as I’m sure you will agree.

Inspire to be Inspired

21st August 2013 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

I do a lot of creative work in different schools over the course of each passing year and I am witness to some immensely fabulous talent on a constant basis.

Young people have such magnificent imaginations and amazingly creative ideas. They generally pursue these ideas without fear of failure. They step forward without the worry that they might not be doing it right or indeed without a thought that they might get it wrong. Without any anxiety, they vigorously march forward with their conceptions and create amazing characters, creatures, scenarios, stories, situations, worlds etc.
It is a pleasure to behold.

Recently a group of year 3 students from Gomersal Primary School created a character, each taking their inspiration from my work.
This was not a project that I was involved with at all apart from that fact that it was my work that was used as the catalyst for their fantastic creativity.

Upon visiting the school I was told about this project and was able to talk to the young people that had created these fab images. They kindly gave me permission to photograph the work in order to make this blog post.

Inspiring young people to use their imaginations and to have fun in the process fills me with an enormous amount of pride and purpose. Being able to impart the things that I have learned over the years and seeing young people connect, engage and run with their own ideas is something that I will never tire of.

All that said, I have to admit that the inspiration that I get from working creatively along side young people, is absolutely priceless!

These are the creations that the year 3 students at Gomersal came up with.
They are AWESOME!

Bradford Academy – House Banner Project

21st August 2013 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

During Monday 8th & Tuesday 9th July 2013 I ran a two-day workshop working with some fine young people form Bradford Academy.

A competition that had been run in the school challenged young people to create a mural design that would reflected what their individual house represented and meant to them.

The Academy is built around a ‘HOUSE’ system and each house plays a large part in the day-to-day activities within the school.

There were many quality designs and ideas produced and the difficult job was whittling it down and collectively deciding which designs would go forward to be used. One design for each house was eventually decided upon.

Over the two day workshop much fun was had in the interpretation of the designs using a vast amount of different mediums and techniques, some traditional and some completely experimental. The art room where the work took place was a hive of activity and much fun was had in the construction and creation of the four mural boards.

The young people involved were an engaging, committed, talented bunch of characters who were a delight to work with. The artwork that they produced on the boards was terrific and shall take pride of place within the school.

Battyeford CE(C) Primary School – Heroes and Villains Workshop

6th June 2013 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

A fabulous project creating Heroes, Villains and the City in which they dwell, with year 4 and 5 children from Battyeford CE(C) Primary School.

The children were really engaged in this project and produced an enormous amount of work over a short period of time.

When discussing the project with them it was great to hear their ideas and emerging narratives based around the characters that they were creating. A lot of the time I think that I have a good imagination. It pales into insignificance when talking to and creating with young people!
This was a really great project with a huge amount of creativity. The children enjoyed it and I really enjoyed working with them.

Check out their work.