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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

 

As part of North Huddersfield Community Arts Week I ran a series of mini workshops today working with young people from Ashbrow School and Birkby Junior School.

The workshop was based on creating digital graphics that would work well on skateboard decks. Mostly working in pairs, the pupils only had about 20 minutes to create these wonderful images.

They listened well, worked extremely diligently and had a lot of fun in the process. I was super impressed with the images that they produced. Awesome stuff!

Birkby Junior School Images

Carolanne and Ushna

Kian and Nabil

Ali and Reggie

Zahra and Raheel

Iqra and Allysia

Esha

Atika and Sadia

Faiza and Bilal

Ismaeal

Muskan and Calvin

Ibraheem and Asad

Birkby Decks

Ashbrow School Images

Amber

Grace and Burhan

Zain and Jake

Jujhar and Troy

Kieren

Ellie-rose and Tayba

Pharrell and Armin

Ashbrow Deck

A group of Gomersal Primary School pupils from years 3, 4 and 5 have just completed a workshop creating digital self portrait illustrations with some very striking results.
Based on photographic images of themselves, the pupils skilfully created these digital illustrations using a series of layers and other digital tools.

An alternative colour pallet was also explored for some of the digital colouring, which made for some very interesting imagery indeed. Further layering techniques were also looked at with the introduction of textures and various other incidents and elements adding further depth to their images. Here are the brilliant illustrations that they created.

Digital Illustration Portraits