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Kids school and holiday art clubs


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Adult groups (including young adults 15+!)

Interested in a group pottery session @HagsPottery? Raynes Park, Wimbledon border, SW20 Hand building techniques and throwing on the wheel (where 1:1 supervision is possible) Fully equipped studio with kiln, potters wheel, variety of slips, glazes and underglazes Book a block of sessions at a time to suit your group – subject to availability 2 […]

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First after school Art and Pottery Classes @Hags Pottery

I thought I would share the results of my first three weeks of classes in my Garden studio. Children began by learning how to prepare or ‘wedge’ the clay, and made simple pinch pots, formed into the shape of their choice. We then experimented with pressing found, natural and man made objects into the clay […]

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Introducing Children’s Art School @Hags pottery

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Fuzzy Felting

Following on from creating Abstract Pattern making collages (see here), Veena‘s group progressed to Wet Felting. Firstly, the young artists watched a Youtube video clip, to understand the technique, click here to see. Five work stations were set up around the classroom, each for a different stage in the process.  From choosing colours, to sponging, rubbing and […]

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Abstract Pattern Making

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The collaborative young artists’ led by textile artist Veena and her creative assistant Sam jumped into Abstraction with vigour and delight.  See the energy in these wax drawings whirling and swirling in repetitive circular spirals. The underlying application for these abstract designs will evolve into a carpet design further down the line, using woollen felt. […]

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Riley Stars and Stripes

Creative Practitioner Louise Pasquill led our youngest artists into abstraction this week.  Inspired by legendary British artist Bridget Riley, we all watched a short video about her life and her work (hover over blue name to be taken through to the link).  Tate Kids is a great place to introduce children to a wide gallery […]

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Animation Planet!

This half term, Veena‘s group set to work creating an imaginary planet: The planet could take any form or shape and be inhabited by any type of creature. They watched short stop-animations on youtube to get an indication of the potential breadth of possibilities, styles and storylines. By learning from other artists examples, the children […]

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Cockles and Mussels Alive Alive O’

Wrapped up in the depths of Winter, we flung off the blankets and strode off to the breezy seaside for inspiration for our latest project, a spirited Shell Ring collage. A quiet coastal cove, littered with skimming stones,  small brightly coloured plastic pebbles dredged in from the sea, rock pools and sandy waves rippling over […]

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Treetop Figurines

For our final festive session of the term, we took a treetop turn.  Artist and illustrator Louise Pasquill provided an example of a doll, as a point of reference from which the group could develop their ideas for their own miniature figurines. The children were given some skills, such as wrapping, threading, folding, braiding, knotting and […]

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Character Clay Portraits

Continuting with our themes of modelling (see Firebird project by clicking here) and portraiture we took several weeks to complete masks, made from air dry clay and decorated with poster paint. The children were given the technical skills to attach noses, eyes, hair and lips to create a portrait of their characters.  Most of them […]

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Fanelli Faces

Inspired by the popular children’s book illustrator Sara Fanelli, artist and illustrator Louise Pasquill, led an activity early in the term on character portraits.  Sara’s use of collage creates astounding, dramatic and sometimes frightening results.  See her book “Mythological Monsters”.  She thinks carefully about composition and makes interesting decisions when assembling her characters. After watching […]

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Northern Lights Christmas Tree

This magical Christmas Tree scene was a short project, that was completed in the last session of term.  Perfect for trying at home over the Christmas holidays! The first step is to cut out a paper fir tree, using a stencil and cover it with strips of tissue paper using stick glue. Next up, the […]

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Fallen Leaf Bowls

With the arrival of Autumn, colourful swathes of leaves inspired artist and tutor Veena Scialo to bring her own version of natural art into the classroom.  A delicate, realistic fallen leaf bowl made beautifully using air dry clay and poster paint. The first stage of this project involved life drawing leaves, to learn their outline, […]

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A Flock of Firebirds

The theme for our project this half term, originated from the Russian Folklore Story, The Firebird.  Interpreted into classical music by Igor Stravinsky, we listened to the dramatic finale on youtube, watched a clip of the ballet and read the story, to inspire us to imagine the phoenix rising from the ashes, the resurrection of […]

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Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright

Welcome back to Autumn Term at Children’s Art School at Pelham Primary School. Leading the older group, textile Fine Artist Veena Scialo, started off by reading the 1794 William Blake poem “The Tyger” (The Tiger).  In parallel, we watched a video on contemporary children’s book author and illustrator Chris Haughton, in which he clearly demonstrates […]

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Modern Pottery Masters

The younger artists at Pelham After School Art Club, have been working hard on their painting skills, so it’s time to apply them to decoration, but what can we decorate?  Let’s make something! A hand-crafted plaster pot or vase formed using recycled plastic bottles in a variety of sizes and shapes; mod roc and a […]

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Botanical Life Studies and Exploring Floral Painting

The mindfulness that emanated from the children, when working from life drawing flowers, had a calming effect on the class.  We took time to look very carefully at what was in front of us and broke it down into different focusses.  Light, shade and how to follow the line from observation, combined with a little […]

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The Book of Me

This year, we have looked at plants, animals, our friends and fellow classmates, so now it’s time to focus on me, myself and I. Our quest: To answer “Who am I?” in a book, through expressing our feelings, thoughts and ideas in a way that celebrates the wonder of our individuality.  Each one of us […]

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Impasto Impressions

This summer half term, the bigger artists and their teacher Veena Scialo, looked closely at Van Gogh and impasto painting techniques. Using a simple paste prepared with water, flour, sugar and salt the children had fun creating their paints by adding powder paints. We then experimented for most of the session with a range of […]

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Movable Models

The circus came to visit Pelham Art Club’s youngest artists and we learnt to look at shapes, forms and different dimensions through several playful art projects. To get inspired by the energy and excitement the circus brought to town in decades past, we watched a clip of the Cirque du Soleil to give a contemporary […]

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Carnival Confetti

The Carnival is coming to town at Pelham Art Club, with artist Veena Scialo. The historic mystery of masked Venetian drama fed the imaginations of Veena’s students this term.  To start the creative juices flowing, the group watched a short clip that set the scene and inspired the group towards the design and creation of […]

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Bumble Bee, Humble Bee

With the arrival of Spring, Veena Scialo and her older Pelham Art Club students dedicated this term to our brilliant bees and their plight for survival. The older artists started off with a poly block printing plate, using hexagonal shapes to create an A3 sized honeycomb design. For inspiration, everyone watched a little video to […]

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The Big Small Book

Hello and welcome to Pelham Year One Artists (Y1) group update. Where do we begin to create a language of visual expression to tell our stories? Firstly, we need to know exactly what it is we want to say.  Louise Pasquill devised this project to teach the children how to connect words and pictures.  The […]

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The Water-Lily Pond

Welome back to Spring Term at Pelham Primary Children’s Art School! Here’s what’s been happening…the older children, led by textile artist Veena Scialo, took inspiration from the tranquility of the beautiful botanical masterpiece that was Claude Monet‘s garden at Giverny.  In particular, his series of 250 paintings, the Water-Lillies. Monet moved to his pink house at […]

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Big Garden Birdwatch: Avian Art

January’s annual RSPB scientific survey, The Big Garden Birdwatch, was the inspiration for our project studying avian wildlife.  To warm the children’s minds up for chilly nature, we played guessing games to name different varieties of birds; heard the poem “Blackbird” by Nicola Davies and the Beatles song by the same name.  We listened to […]

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If you go down to the woods today….

You were sure of a BIG surprise! Artist and forest school teacher Philippa Snell led a wonderful birthday party for Lucas We were treated to the best of British winter weather – cold, crisp and sunny. Perfect for a fun afternoon of making in the woods. Philippa taught us how to build a Teepee and […]

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Kings, Queens and Super Stars

With Festivities in full flow, we finished this term adorned with crowns fit for royalty.  Bejewelled and beautiful the children took great pride in designing, making and wearing their creations. We opened this activity by discussing the meaning of the word “crown”.  What imagery does it conjure up in your mind?  How will you capture […]

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Fabulous Firs

More creative Christmas trees, we can’t get enough of them.  This project required both technical dexterity and creative flair.  These stunning seasonal folded fir trees were made from paper and were decorated with golden foil baubles. The two-tone trees were folded from two pieces of paper, then trimmed to a semi-circle at the base.  Adorned with […]

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O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

Christmastide can be expressed through arts and crafts in so many ways, it’s hard to choose a project.  So, we chose many! The first resulted in some gentle, atmospheric, snowy landscapes, allowing the viewer to glance into a magical world of Christmas Spruces, against a starry sky.  These were made using mixed media; watercolour block […]

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Brilliant Beacons

Artist Louise Pasquill and assistant practitioner Susie Aylett, created a real challenge for the children, with this multi-skilled project, to build a functional lighthouse. The many techniques covered to learn how to assemble this complex design and technology model spanned most of this term.  Here are some of them: painting; cutting; glueing; knotting; folding; 3D […]

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Spiritual Spirals of Sand

Artist Barbara Veena Scialo’s inspiration for this next project, came from the Hindu celebration of Diwali. During Diwali, Hindu’s draw bright Rangoli patterns on the floor, by the front door, to entice Goddess Lakshmi, to visit their homes.  Traditionally, materials used for this are: rice, flour, chalk, grains and sand. Veena chose to use a […]

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Creepy Collage

To make these lively collages with a Hallowe’en theme, artist Louise Pasquill started by teaching us how to use the materials we need for this project: a palette of watercolour block paints, watercolour paper, soft (sable-like) brushes and water. Firstly, we each took a small piece of white, textured watercolour paper.  We learnt the wet-on-wet […]

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Fluorescent Fireworks

During the first week back after half term, talented textile artist Barbara Veena Scialo brought the colours and luminous magic of bonfire night into the classroom. The children used black, textured sugar paper and chalk pastels to create dynamic at times explosive drawings of the night sky, lit up with the beautiful chemistry of colour and pattern […]

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Paint, Print, Cut, Stick, Stamp – Day 2

The second day of our Christmas Course built on a productive day’s making during DAY ONE where we made a set of papers for collaging. We made brushes, for painting our papers and filters for taking photographs. During the second day we used a template for cutting loads of abstract shapes from our beautiful drawn […]

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Paint, Print, Cut, Stick, Stamp – Day 1

Artist Abigail Hunt returned to Children’s Art School to lead another exploratory 2 day course looking at painting, collage and printmaking. Children got of to a busy start by making their very own painting utensils. A variety of materials were used to make brushes, rollers and stampers.  We used feathers, bubble wrap, wood offcuts, wire […]

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Seasonal Squirrel Sensation

Autumn is settling in and it’s brought the outside into the classroom.  Watching the squirrels in my garden, I decided that we should appreciate this frequent garden visitor, living in our urban jungle. We opened the lesson with a poem “Squirrel” from “A First Book of Nature”, illustrated vibrantly by Mark Hearld. We chatted about […]

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Modelling Miro

The source of Veena Barbara Scialo‘s inspiration this term, was the famous Spanish artist, Joan Miro. Born in the Mediterranean city of Barcelona, at the turn of the 19th Century, this passionately creative artist worked in ceramics, sculpture and in paint.  A contemporary of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Marc Chagall, Miro developed his own visual language […]

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A is for Architecture, B is for Block Printing, C is for Colour

This term we opened up our eyes, big and wide, to look and see the environment surrounding our school. Buildings!  They’re everywhere.  We live in a city after all.  Architecture is all around us, the design  element that makes our town so varied.  Houses all have similar features: doors, windows, roofs, walls…But, when we stop […]

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The Drawing Laboratory – Day 2

During day 2 at the Drawing Laboratory with Millie Nice we took some of our ideas further and continued the theme of becoming drawing scientists! To remind yourself of what we did in day 1 click here. We began the morning with a few more warm up activities to get our brains working. Drawing with […]

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Pop-Up Parties

Louise Pasquill‘s class continued to exercise their skills developing characters and visual storytelling, this time building 3-dimensional scenes. Together we read the book “Harry by the Sea“, to inspire us to think about setting a scene visually. Although the illustrator Margaret Bloy Graham, used a limited colour palate, she made very expressive drawings, to bring […]

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Mono Print Mobiles

Sticking with the summer term theme of circles, Barbara Veena Scialo‘s group immersed themselves in a magical Mono Print Mobiles project. Firstly, to create the printing plate, a circular foam disk was mounted on a cardboard base. The paint was added one colour at a time, each artist used cotton buds to make a picture […]

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Reeling Round

Barbara Veena Scialo‘s group made merry spinning tops, each individually designed using patterns created with felt tipped markers. The children started with a circle of white card.  Then cut it out and made a hole in the centre using a matchstick. They covered one side with a simple design. The images were created with contrasting […]

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Twists and Turns

Artist Louise Pasquill and assistant Susie Aylett, led a lesson to create an animated drawing. The children came up with a story, a setting and three characters.  They set to work building them from a wide selection of beautiful papers, cards and metallic pencils and pens. We took inspiration from imagining which animals we would like […]

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Magnificent Mark Making

Today Barbara Veena Scialo introduced her group to mark making using chalk pastels and oil pastels together. The children really enjoyed this rather messy lesson.   The results are really diverse and varied.The results are really diverse and varied. It was fun to explore the nature of the materials and push their boundaries. The children […]

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Luscious Leaves

This term Louise Pasquill and her young artists explored the Life of Leaves! Lime green, olive green, smooth, ribbed, oval, triangular, we investigated the wide variety of textures, shapes and colours. We talked about what trees provide, from food, to building materials; shade, to clean air. Which tree did this leaf come from?  Why are […]

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The Drawing Laboratory – Day 1

Artist and Illustrator Millie Nice spent the day with us today to explore the limitless possibilities of drawing. She asked the children to approach drawing as if it was a scientific process, helping us to find out about the world around us. We began the morning by making a portfolio case to hold our work. […]

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Pop Portraits

Louise Pasquill was inspired by our previous project Fun with Photography and Dada collage puppets. We discussed “identity”.  How we recognise positions in society?  By uniform; such as the armed forces, public servants and heath care workers. We dreamt of ambitions for our future: nurses, policemen, soldiers, vets, rock stars, dancers, artists and art teachers. We […]

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Lovely Lanterns

This half term Louise Pasquill worked on some beautiful tissue and paper straw lanterns with our youngest artists. We looked at the structure of a cube and used biodegradable materials like straws, tape and tissue. We folded the straws to build our cube frames, added decorated walls made from tissue and cut out windows.  The […]

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‘Every Child is an artist – the problem is how to remain one..’ Picasso

Louise Pasquill began the term looking at Picasso with our youngest art club members in Reception and Year 1. Picasso has an exhibition at Tate Modern at the moment and famously said Every Child is an artist, the problem is how to remain one when one grows up…. I took my children to see the […]

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Maths through Art

The current climate for art education is often disheartening, with art departments under increasing pressure, teachers everywhere fighting for their subject to be valued and for people to understand the importance of art education in a fraught battle ground dominated by the STEM subjects (Science Technology Engineering and Maths).  Those who advocate STEAM  – add […]

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Rebel Art School – Day 2

In the second day of our ‘Rebel Art School’ children worked with artist Kate Squires to make more sculptural works that extended their creative thinking. In DAY ONE (click the link for a reminder) children thought about how to break rules and began to un-learn some of their preconceived ideas about creating. Over the two days […]

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Rebel Art School – Day 1

At the Rebel Art School this Easter we aimed to examine the nature of rules and how breaking them can help fuel creativity, and lead us to approach art making from fresh angles.   Artist Kate Squires took us on a creative adventure into materials and processes inspiring us to make sculptures, performative work and […]

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Drawing Dragons – watercolours and metallics

Alongside our playful work on emotions our little artists have been learning to use metallic and watercolour pencils to make intricate studies of dragons. They made observational drawings from toys. Gave their dragons names and characteristics We used watercolour pencils on lovely water colour paper, to create careful patterning and details. Water colour pencils mixed […]

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Mr and Mrs – emotion and self reflection

Our youngest artists at Pelham worked with Louise Pasquil and Lana Le in a playful exploration of emotion, expression, self reflection and understanding. They looked at the Mr and Mrs books and other children’s stories for ideas. Post it notes were used as part of a guessing game on emotions – posted on each other’s backs Balloons were […]

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Shadow Stories

At our after school art club at Pelham school this term we have been exploring a wonderful cross curricular project inspired by the art of Tove Janson and her creations the Moomins Artist Veena Scialo visited the recent exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery and, as her own art often explores the links between art, stories […]

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Collaborative Design and Build 2018 – day 2

On Day 2 of our architecturally inspired art course children got to work as structural engineers, to refine their structures, then morphed into interior decorators, furniture designers and town planners as the city developed and took on its own life. To catch up on DAY 1 click HERE We began the day straight away by […]

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Collaborative Design and Build – day1

Architect and Designer James Sale Joined us from his practice Co-DB (Collaborative design and build) to lead our popular architecture inspired course. Describing themselves as a team of experienced designers, doers and makers they are well placed to help children tackle large scale building projects, encouraging them to solve problems and see opportunities wherever they […]

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The Art of Change

I am very proud to have my article published in NSEAD magazine (National Society for Education in Art and Design), Issue 21 ‘The Student Voice’ Spring 2018 The Article describes a 2 day workshop, The Art of Change devised and delivered by Artist Sarah Carne with myself Annabel Johnson  for Children’s Art School in  June […]

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Christmas crafts with our littlest artists

Our littlest artists have been busy preparing for Christmas! Cute little Snowmen, with gorgeous bobble hats! Some fantastical coloured Christmas trees in a winter landscape. Looks like they are looking for Santa in the Northern Lights! And some fun cChristmas trees made from paper plates to decorate your Christmas tree! Wishing you a very restful […]

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Snow Topped Gingerbread Houses

Key stage 1 After school Art Club have been working on a Christmas Gingerbread house. Printing backgrounds Folding shapes to make a house stand up   Designing stained glass windows   Peeping through the windows at Christmas Scenes   Then  topping off with a sprinkling of glittery snow There were some gorgeous little Christmassy decorative […]

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Christmas Cut Outs

Following on from our work on Matisse and Still Life and Collage – click the links to see how the project developed. Children experimented with all the techniques they learnt this term to create some new collaged cut out scenes. They learnt about perspective to create the background of a room. They used wax resist techniques to create […]

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Still Life and Collage

This term our after school art club have been working on a project inspired by the Matisse in the Studio exhibition at the Royal Academy. See how the still life project began by clicking Exploring Still Life  In the following weeks children continued building and painting their own still life compositions. They were inspired by […]

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Matisse in the Studio – exploring Still Life

For the rest of this term children have continued to be inspired by Matisse. They are working on a still life project.                         Veena and I visited the lovely exhibition Matisse in the Studio (click the link to visit) at the Royal Academy showing […]

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Exploring Autumn festivals with KS1

Louise and Lana have been exploring the creative potential of Autumn this term. We started off by using natural materials to ‘draw faces’ as part of our half term focus on Exploring Drawing to get us started. (click the links to see previous projects.) As we got closer to half term we combined lots of […]

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Print, play, design, collaborate

This half term we continued our printing project and looked at ways to use our printed designs in groups and to design everyday items. It’s often hard to know what to do wth art work made in the throws of experimentation. With prints made in the first half of the term during our project Autumnal […]

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Children’s Art School in Venice – Mother as curator 2

I wrote a BLOG post about my third visit to the Venice Biennale and my first as director of Children’s Art school 2 years ago. Children’s Art school in Venice – Mother as curator  About a month ago I returned to La Biennale di Venezia 2017 – Viva Arte Viva and found myself reflecting on my […]

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Wild Art on Wimbledon Common – day 2

We arrived for the second morning of our Wild Art on Wimbledon Common course to our undisturbed camp – always a relief to find our art work untouched by the nights activities! Click HERE to see DAY 1’s activities Today was to be mostly about mud, so we mixed a gorgeous pile of sticky stuff […]

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Wild Art on Wimbledon Common – day 1

This years Wild Art on Wimbledon Common was conceived and designed by artist and forest school practitioner Philippa Snell. Due to last minute unforeseen circumstances Philippa was unable to lead the course but our team were able to deliver the course with her expert tutelage!  Bright and early we set up camp with some shelters […]

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Exploring drawing with KS1

Our Key Stage One Group has been very popular this year with lots of new children joining us. Louise Pasquill assisted by Lana Lee, both practicing artists and illustrators, are experimenting with lots of fun drawing activities to get to know the children’s  creative little minds! As a warm up exercise, we take an imaginary […]

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Animation Station for Wimbledon Bookfest – Sunday

Day 2 of the Animation Station for Wimbledon Bookfest saw us working on larger scale animations with Artist and Illustrator Amy Pennington, as well as consolidating our work on stop motion animations using the emotion app on the i-Pad. Click HERE for details of the Saturday workshop. We started by looking at animations made at […]

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Animation Station for Wimbledon Bookfest – Saturday

For the third year running we have partnered with Wimbledon Bookfest to run a book related art course as part of their 10 day festival on Wimbledon Common We have run Illustration, Zine Making courses and this year saw the return of the popular Animation Station. Artist and Illustrator Amy Pennington introduced the children to […]

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Autumnal printed patterns

In our second session artist Veena Scialo returned as the regular tutor for the older children at Pelham Art Club. She continued the pattern theme that I begun the week before when we looked at the work of Bridget Riley. This time the children were inspired by autumnal seed pods and made some lovely drawings […]

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Reimagining Riley

Art Club at Pelham Primary school has got off to an amazing start this year. We are lucky to be working with 2 groups of lovely creative children who are bursting with ideas this year. Annabel Johnson, Founder of Children’s Art School started the year with a lively collaborative session based on the work of […]

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Join us at the Animation Station on the 7 and 8 October

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Children’s Art School are recruiting

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Assistants Needed We are seeking 2 paid assistants and volunteers for our thriving After School Art Club in Wimbledon. To assist lead artists and support children at our club in Pelham Primary School, Wimbledon. An opportunity to gain experience in planning, supporting and delivering termly art projects of an ambitious nature. Paid and volunteer positions available depending […]

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Sculpt a portrait

Artist Veena Scialo has been working on a portrait project this half term – see the beautiful results of her drawing and painting work HERE She was so impressed with how the children developed that she decided to push them further into using clay.   The children applied their knowledge of proportion when laying out […]

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Dragonflies

Louise Pasquill has been looking at light with our youngest artists at Pelham school See work from earlier this them by clicking HERE To conclude work on Transparency, Translucency and opacity the children combined ideas in a model dragonfly They designed wings     Made bodies from mod-roc plaster bandages and tape   Joined the […]

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Paint the Great Outdoors – course 2 day 2

In the second day of our Painting outdoors course with artist Matthew Krishanu we went from painting together on a grand scale…. to some more focussed drawing activities,   with one continuous line   and the hand we don’t normally draw with… …and some tiny watercolours. Here we focussed on colour, skills for using watercolours […]

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Paint the Great Outdoors, course 2 – day 1

The second of our ‘Paint the Great Outdoors’ summer courses took place at South Park Gardens in Wimbledon. A beautiful little park full of wonderful stimuli for the children to work from. As the children arrived they made a personalised portfolio case to hold their work.   We then unrolled a large piece of heavyweight […]

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Paint the Great Outdoors – day two

Day 2 of our Painting the Great Outdoors course saw artist Matthew Krishanu continue to inspire the children in observing their surroundings and using their imagination to explore the Great outdoors. To see the results of DAY ONE click the link We began the sunny morning with some warm up drawing activities to get our […]

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Paint the Great Outdoors – day one

This summer Painter Matthew Krishanu returned to Children’s Art School to lead another 2 days of Paint the Great Outdoors. This year we are running 2 courses one at Donhead Prep school and the other in South Park Gardens, Wimbledon – two beautiful and contrasting settings where children can paint outside and take advantage of […]

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Paint a portrait

With our KS2 group at Pelham School Art Club we have spent some time learning how to draw a portrait. We used mirrors and drew each other, looking at proportion and measurement We looked at a wide range of portrait art and the children recognised many different artists. We also looked at the different techniques […]

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Summer light with KS1

This summer the children in our Key Stage 1 group have been thinking about light through many different mediums Sometimes the heat demanded cool watercolours with the theme of light summer evenings, Louise read the poem Bed in Summer. The children painted their ideas of what they would see through an imaginary window, if they opened […]

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Thinking in 3 dimensions with KS1 children

This term our Key stage 1 children took inspiration from our sculpture course that took place during the Easter Holidays – Thinking in Three Dimensions Louise began exploring the qualities of plasticine …and used various found objects to build little abstract sculptures which the children displayed. They made drawings of their sculptures  And then made […]

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Animating the AccessArt village

This term’s project at Pelham Primary School’s After School Art Club has been to take part in a big participatory art project with AccessArt called the AccessArt Village See details of this lovely embroidery and sculpture project as it developed by clicking the links below. Stage 1    Stage 2    Completed Village   Animation Showreel Our […]

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The Art of Change – What, How and Should We? – Day 2

During day 2 of our Half Term Course – The Art of Change, our game based on decisions and consequences really started to take shape. Artist Sarah Carne took the children on a 2-day adventure into conceptual art with a political twist. Click the link to Day 1 to see how the course began. After designing […]

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The Art of Change: What, How and Should we? – day 1

In this Half Term’s art course, children alongside artist Sarah Carne have been getting just a little bit political in the lead up to the General Election. We have been using art to help children find their voice, explore how decisions have consequences and how they can make a difference in the world. We have […]

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Access Art Village – complete

At Pelham School we have spent this term working on a project called the Access Art Village Read my previous posts to see how it started and find out more about Access Art Access art Village part 1 and  part 2 Our own village is almost finished and we are all set to send our […]

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AccessArt Village stage 2

This term at Pelham School After School Art Club we have been taking part in the AccessArt Village Project. See my post from earlier this term for a look at where we started – AccessArt Village After experimenting with some stitches we began to transfer our house designs onto calico squares The children then simply stitched […]

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Thinking in Three Dimensions – Day 2

During the second day of our 2 day course for the Easter Holidays, Thinking in Three Dimensions,we continued experimenting with building, joining, wrapping, painting, gold leafing and the children’s favourite ‘free making’ sessions. Take a look at DAY 1’s activities by clicking the link HERE We started the morning with painting the block and pebble […]

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Thinking in Three Dimensions – Day 1

This Easter holiday we have been Thinking in Three Dimensions with artist Abigail Hunt. Our 2-day sculpture course warmed up with a round of  ‘Kims’ Game’ Children had to memorise and draw selected three dimensional objects after they were covered over. Abigail showed the children a wide variety of sculptures and installations to give them […]

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Animation Station – Animations are ready

We are happy to announce that all the films made at the Animation Station during February half term are available online to watch. You can read about what happened during the course by clicking the links below Animation Station Day One and Day Two We have compiled all the children’s works into 3 short showreels.   […]

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Put yourself in the picture

Our Key Stage One children at Pelham School Art club have started a little project on Portraiture encouraging themselves to look at themselves and each other in a variety of different ways. The children began by dressing up and drawing each other wearing a hat of their choice. They used mirrors and drew each other. […]

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The AccessArt Village

This term at Pelham Art Club we are taking part in a large scale project organised by arts organisation AccessArt The aim of the project is simple: to inspire the AccessArt audience of all ages (children, teenagers and adults) to make a sewn drawing of their home on a 20 cm square piece of fabric. […]

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Animation Station – day 2

Day 2 at the Animation Station saw children developing their animation skills in new ways, we experimented with full body animation, made new characters using collage and perfected our skills using the i-motion app.     We began the day by looking at what we had achieved and watching a showreel of the films made […]

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Animation Station- day 1

We kicked off to a great start with day one of the Animation Station, led by artist and Illustrator Amy Pennington, supported by artist Veena Scialo,  a recent animation graduate and another student of illustration and animation. Our very well qualified team began this chilly day with a warm up in the gym! Amy then talked […]

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Young Children Drawing

This week children were exploring how to draw animals we really got through a lot of drawing studies. We looked at a number of images of drawings from a large range of painters, including Gainsborough’s Cats, Matisse’s Horses and Picasso’s Bull and Cockerell. The children were given an animal model and were asked to study […]

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A watercolored commotion in the ocean

Our Key Stage one class at Pelham after school art club have been sloshing around in the ocean and learning about watercolour painting. They began by looking at whales and making a simple model of a blue whale using a paper plate.   They continued to observe whales and other sea creatures by looking at […]

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Warp and weft

At Pelham after school art club this half term children have been learning about weaving with artist Veena Scialo. Tapestry is an art form used throughout the ages to tell stories, and decorate the homes of the rich and powerful. Many contemporary artists like Grayson Perry and William Kentridge use this traditional craft technique to […]

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Festive Focus – day 2

Things got a little more festive in the second day of our ‘Festive Focus’ Photography course. Click here to see Festive Focus day one We began the day by looking at some images of Christmases past and present, sourced from photographic archives. Using print outs and photocopies of the photos we made yesterday, we altered […]

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Festive Focus – day 1

To kick off day one of Festive Focus, our Christmas holiday art course for 2016, Marysa Dowling introduced the children to her own photographic practice. They looked at how different parts of our body can express emotion – i.e. the hands. They looked at Marysa’s ongoing project, The Movement of an Object, in which Marysa […]

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Starry, Starry night

As winter draws in and Christmas approaches children have been looking at Van Gogh’s iconic image  The Starry night. Veena used a traditional teaching method with the children to help them look at the painting and reinterpret it in their own way. Veena often runs pop up painting workshops where adult groups meet to paint together and […]

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Cutting, sculpting and dangling

This half term our KS1 group at Pelham school have been inspired by Anthony Calder and his kinetic sculptures. Tate Modern had an exhibition of his work just last year – Performing Sculpture. Take a look here. Louise has been starting each session with a short drawing exercise to warm up those little fingers. Here the […]

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Leaf impressions

This Autumn Veena has been working with the Key Stage 2 art club at Pelham Primary School on a lovely ceramics project. The children began by revisiting basic colour theory through mixing powder paints. They enjoyed mixing colours and completing a simple grid. They observed Autumn leaves and made observational paintings, applying their colour mixing […]

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INK – The story of a publication

INK: A Basic Guide to Building a Kids Book Made with Artist Ania Bas as part of our 2 day ‘Zine’ in a Weekend Course with Wimbledon Bookfest See DAY ONE and DAY TWO for full details of the course. INK is here – our very own publication created by children for adults. To order a […]

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Action and Animation

Our Key Stage 2 group at Pelham Primary school have continued the theme of movement and the figure. We started the term with some life drawing, which developed into small pipe cleaner sculptures. See earlier BLOG post –  The Moving body They moved on to create sculpted environments for their figures and were completely absorbed in their […]

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Day of the dead

Our thriving art club at Pelham school has 2 groups – KS1 and KS2. Our younger group have been looking at sculpture and relief with Louise Pasquill this term in a project themed around the Day of the Dead! Children began by  experimenting with clay, pattern and texture in the first 2 sessions. Using a symbolic […]

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‘Zine’ in a weekend – day 2

Artist Ania Bas led the second day of our literary inspired course in collaboration with Wimbledon Bookfest. On Day One (click for more details) we concentrated on what makes a charismatic character and on Day two we looked at what makes a sensational storyline. Our findings are to be compiled into a ‘Zine’ aimed at […]

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‘Zine’ in a Weekend

As part of a collaboration with Wimbledon Bookfest we worked with artist Ania Bas to create and publish a Zine in a weekend. Taking literary inspiration we decided to publish a zine for budding authors on what makes a good children’s book from the point of view of the children. We would have 2 afternoons […]

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Texture, pattern and clay

We have finally kicked off for a new term at Pelham Primary School with a flourishing class. We now have 2 full groups. One Key Stage 1 group led by Louise Pasquill and a Key stage 2 group led by Veena Scialo. We began the term in glorious sunshine by working outside with some activities tested during our summer holiday […]

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The Moving Body

We have finally kicked off for a new term at Pelham Primary School with a flourishing class. We now have 2 full groups of Of Key Stage 1 led by Louise Pasquill and Key stage 2 children led by Veena Scialo. We began the term in glorious sunshine by working outside with some activities tested during […]

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Fleeting Images: Action and Animation – course 2, day 2

In day 2 of our second summer course we continued to think about the extraordinary acton of the human body. To see day one or course 1  click the blue links. We began with a reflection on the previous day’s work, then Viyki explained how to translate yesterdays experiments into a flick book. We then […]

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Fleeting Images: Action and animation, course 2

Artist Viyki Turnbull led the second of out summer courses focussing on the body, which aims to help children think about how to work with the figure in 2D, 3D and create better animated drawings. We began with free experimentation with chalk and charcoal on large sheets of paper. Scribbling, mark making and rubbing. Using […]

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Fleeting Images: Life drawing, action and animation – day 2

Day 2 of our Life drawing and animation course saw Viyki Turnbull working further with the children on how to capture movement in drawing and sculpture. Today we concentrated on skills for animation To view Day 1 click here. We began the morning by looking at some flick book animations created by children – sourced from […]

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Fleeting Images: Life Drawing and Animation

Artist Viyki Turnbull led day one of our Summer Art Course which focussed on drawing the human body in movement. We know children love to draw cartoons, so taking this as a starting point we aim to give more depth to their drawings by focussing on looking at the human form in movement, whilst keeping […]

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Picture Book

In our after school Art club at Pelham School we have been working on a picture book about birds. At Pelham each class is named after a bird which was Veena’s starting point for the project. The children began by cutting bird shapes from Wax resist papers they had made in a previous session. Click […]

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Curious Creatures

Annabel Johnson, director of Children’s Art School dropped in to Pelham today to teach a one off session. It’s great for me to spend a little time with the children, getting to know how their creative minds think. I did one of my favourite activities with them, building on the work Veena has been doing on […]

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Mixed media gardens

Today our year 1 children were working on composition, combining all elements they have worked on this term into one glorious mixed media garden. Click here to see their earlier work. Louise has worked hard on developing fine motor skills for careful paperwork and helping the children with more advanced painting and compositiion techniques. They […]

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Beautiful birds with wax resist papers

Years 2-6 have been experimenting with ways to make decorated paper. Children began by experimenting with the wax resist technique. They used textured papers and wood to create rubbings with wax crayons then applied a wash of blue or black ink. We went on to use the papers the children produced with stencils in the […]

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Gardening with paper and paint -Year 1 at Pelham

This term our year 1 children have been thinking about gardens whilst using paper and paint. We started by developing our paper skills asking where does paper come from, how is it made and what can it be used for. We learnt to fold paper using symmetry to create origami and made Grasshoppers. We also […]

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Collaborative Design and Build – day 2

Day two of Collaborative design and build – our 2 day architecture course. To see a description of day one click here Children revisited their ideas of architecture in drawings and compared them to their initial thoughts –  they began to incorporate elements from their own structures                 […]

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Collaborative Design and Build – day 1

Architect and designer James Sale from Collaborative Design and Build joined us for two days of large scale making, where we learnt about the principles of architecture and design. Back in February I visited James in his vibrant East London studio/workshop where the plans for this holiday course were borne. We began the morning by […]

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Grand designs in the garden

Veena has been working with recycled materials to realise children’s ideas for the perfect garden. First they brainstormed what a good garden should be like.   Then the children worked in groups to imagine what a Garden could look like. They were able to share and discuss their ideas.     Here are the finished […]

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Into the Woods

Louise Pasquill has followed a woodland theme this term with her year one children using stories and biodegradable materials for inspiration. As animals come out of hibernation it’s definitely springtime in the forest at Pelham school. The children drew beautiful pictures of owls and hedgehogs. Then they made small models from clay – first they […]

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How to be a Visual Storyteller- day 2

This half term we have been working with a great bunch of children of mixed ages in our Visual Storytelling course with Illustrator Amy Pennington. On day one children developed  amazing new characters in groups which they took on new adventures in day 2. We began day 2 with some more warm up exercises. We […]

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How to be a Visual Storyteller – day 1

Illustrator Amy Pennington joined us once more to run our popular illustration course. Here is Amy during the warm up – demonstrating a drawing activity. …and helping them to visualise characteristics! (sorry Amy…couldn’t resist!) The children warmed up bodies and fingers with a few activities.   We began with a collaborative drawing exercise where we […]

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Hearts and Flowers: year 2-6

Veena has been doing a short project on the heart in preparation for Valentines day. She encouraged the children to think deeply about the symbol of the heart and what it means to love. She began by showing the children a slideshow of scientific facts about the heart. Children then brainstormed what the heart meant […]

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Hearts and Flowers with Year 1

At Pelham after-school Art Club children have been thinking about the colours that spring have yet to bring and the meaning of Love. With Valentines day this weekend there are some lovely messages in this work that is bursting with colour and warmth. Louise Pasquill has just take over our year 1 group at Pelham […]

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Festive light for dark days

Sabrina Smith-Noble worked on two lovely short projects inspired by colourful festive light. Our year 1 children were fascinated by a video of a paint pouring artwork being made. We used the technique to drip paint over curved jars; tilting them to create unpredictable patterns. When they were dry we used them as lamps which […]

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Mixed media landscapes

At Pelham after school Art Club this term we are working with landscape art looking at the work of  Claude Monet alongside the work of of Kieron Williamson. The children chose from a selection of laminated prints and first made a copy of the image with chalk pastels. They then used paint to work onto […]

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I’m dreaming of…. Merry Christmas from Children’s Art School

To conclude this terms work on the Fibonacci sequence – where we have explored nature and mathematical sequencing in art with children at Pelham school; the children made paper beads with secret messages hidden inside to add to their dream catchers. The finished dreamcatchers were beautiful  – they could look lovely hanging above your child’s bed to […]

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Moving in the Shadows

As part of their work on the human figure Year One children have been experimenting with wire to make figures. See earlier post   Sabrina Smith Noble showed them how to create a small figure out of wire and cover it with foil. Children were then able to manipulate their little doll into different positions. They […]

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Spiralling dreams – mathematics and art and nature

For Artist Veena Scialo’s latest project with her class at Pelham she began reflecting with the children on her love of the spiral form in nature. She has a keen interest in the ideas around the golden section and divine geometry She began by showing the children a couple of clips found on You Tube […]

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A Different Game: Young people working with art and artists

Over the last 9 months I have been working with colleague and friend Alicia Miller to programme the engage international conference in Glasgow. engage are the national association for gallery education the UK’s most effective advocacy and support organisation for gallery education. Many of you have taken a welcome interest in the we topics explored so […]

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Mobiles, fireworks and wire sculptures….

Our year 1 children have been super busy this term experimenting with many different tools and materials. We have looked at Alexander Calder and made little mobiles out of found materials, paper clips and straws. We tried hard to make them balance. We used paint pastel and collage to make firework pictures, imagining how our […]

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Making music from our art

After spending a bit of time designing and making our own sheet of patterned paper we used it to make a small drum inspired by instruments from all over the world. We had some problem solving to do when it came to assembling the paper cups and finding ways  to paste our patterned papers onto […]

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Wild Art on Wimbledon Common 2015 – Day 2

In day 2 of our Wild Art course run by Artist and Forest School practitioner Philippa Snell we continued to think about dwellings for the little people that may inhabit the common when we are not around. In day one we learnt to build a round house for the Hazel Folk using willow to weave […]

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Wild Art on Wimbledon Common 2015

This year’s Wild Art course led by Artist and Forest School practitioner Philippa Snell looks at the idea of building a new civilisation. Starting from the idea that a tribe of tiny people – the Choo Choo tribe – are finding their dwellings destroyed by clumsy Wombles, we began making new places for them to […]

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Positive and Negative pattern

This week at Pelham School’s after school art club we were looking at how positive and negative stencils and templates could create pattern through screen printing and other techniques. We worked in groups of 3 to create a simple screen print. We used our own shapes to lay ur a simple composition. Laid the screen […]

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Children’s Illustration for Wimbledon Bookfest day 2

The second day of our children’s Illustration for Wimbledon Bookfest enabled children to develop characters, taking them on exciting new adventures as part of a team. Children attending the first day of the course – click here – designed our characters and those joining for day 2 developed scenes and stories to bring them to life in some […]

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Space, pattern and lines at Pelham

This week year 1 children completed their abstract pieces by playing with positive and negative space and contour lines. Previous lessons here They created another composition of shapes and then painted the spaces in-between or outlines with bright colours. This created backgrounds for their textured. Can you see a car blowing leaves into the air? […]

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Children’s Illustration for Wimbledon Bookfest

We were invited to work with Wimbledon Bookfest this year to put on a two day illustration course for children. Artist Ania Bas and Illustrator Amy Pennington took on the challenge to lead a group of children in activities that helped them develop ideas on a grand scale for new characters.These characters began larger than […]

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Children’s Art School in Venice: Mother as curator

  One of the things that I think makes Children’s Art School so unique is our emphasis on artists, how they think and do things differently to others, their ability to focus on an idea and see it through; their practice often becoming their life’s work. In an age where distraction is one of the […]

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Wimbledon Bookfest Launch

We are excited to be working with Wimbledon Bookfest this year to run a special 2 day Illustration course for children led by artist Ania Bas and Illustrator Amy Pennington As part of the Wimbledon Bookfest launch weekend Ania and Amy designed a simple activity to get children interacting with their parents and surroundings. We set up […]

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Our newest little artists

Our youngest recruits started this term with Sabrina Smith-Noble, exploring some of the basic elements of art and some  famous artists who have experimented with them too. Some of us are only just 5, but bursting with talent. Week 1 – Lines In our first week we played with different types of lines and their […]

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More marks to music

Last year I worked with a group of children on a session exploring the links between art and music. Click the link Marks to Music to see the full session. I explored the same theme with children from Pelham School’s After school club this week. After experimenting with marks on musical staves thinking about speed, mood […]

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Welcome back!

A big welcome back to all our little artists at Pelham school. Sabrina Smith-Noble and Veena Scialo welcomed lots of new faces and our dedicated old timers back for a new term of creative fun.                     Year 1 children had fun experimenting with line outside in […]

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Painting the Great Outdoors: Course 2 – Day 2

If you have been following the progress of our summer outdoor painting courses led by painter Matthew Krishanu take a look at the final day of our second course below. To see course two, day one click here  To see course one,  day one click here To see course one, day two click here We […]

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Painting the Great Outdoors: Course 2 – Day 1

For more information on activities from day one of our summer outdoor painting course see last weeks blog: Painting the Great Outdoors – day 1 Below are a selection of images from day one of course 2 – 22 July Foraging   Making paintbrushes Using our handmade painting tools Priming a board ready for painting Adding […]

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Painting the Great Outdoors: Day Two

On day 2 of our summer outdoor painting course we continued to develop our skills for painting in the great outdoors! Click here to see what we did in day 1 We began the morning with some simple drawing activities to get us looking at our surroundings more closely. Drawing with one continuous line, or […]

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Painting the Great Outdoors: Day One

In day one of our summer painting course with artist Matthew Krishanu we had great fun learning skills for painting out of doors. We set up camp in our local park South Park Gardens We started by thinking about painting tools, and what we could forage to make our own. We looked at the different […]

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Children’s Art School goes to Margate – Generation ART

Generation ART: Young Artists on Tour Launch event, Sat 20 June, Clore Learning Studio, Turner Contemporary, Margate Touring to Leicester from January 2016 and then to the Isle of White. The work below was selected to be part of this national touring exhibition of children’s art. Click HERE to see a short film about the exhibition. The Way […]

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A Professional Journey

I am very excited to share  my most recent article A Professional Journey: Teacher/educator/curator/mother/artist has just been published by engage, the national society for gallery education. To read, please click the link below A Professional Journey, engage 35, Annabel Johnson   To access the full journal visit the engage website engage 35: Twenty-Five Years of […]

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Boys and Galleries

I notice a general reluctance in people to take boys to art galleries. Perhaps people are worried it might end up a bit like this. (Watch the video clip by clicking the link) Boys and Sculpture Perhaps they are safer in some kind of organised sporting activity? The boys in Eva Rothchild’s art work proceed […]

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Crazy creatures come to life

In our year 1 group at Pelham Primary School children brought to life their crazy creatures made in previous sessions using clay, wire, batteries and other found electrical materials. Delicate wings were added by colouring patterns onto tracing paper. The children then used graph paper and simple modelling skills to create a new world for the creatures […]

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That’s the way to do it!

This term children at Pelham school took a project from start to finish, designing and making their own puppets and backdrop then performing a simple show. The project started with some basic explorations into colour. Veena took the children back to basics to look at colour mixing, pigments and shading. Some simple techniques were learnt […]

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Crazy creatures

Another fabulous session by Sabrina Smith Noble, where year 1 children brought magazine cuttings to life, creating these crazy creatures. Children worked with found images from magazines which were cut out and arranged along with wings, legs and antennae to create insects. Their creations were layered with delicate tracing paper wings and their own drawings […]

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Gelatine Printing – wobble wobble!

Post Image

With our talented Year 1 artists at Pelham Primary School, Sabrina Smith Noble built on her Easter Holiday Printmaking course to experiment with this amazing gelatine printmaking technique. Using trays of wobbly gelatine you can make a simple printing plate and apply ink  to create lovely mono prints The children created stencils of their initials […]

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Magnificent Machines

To conclude our project The Way things Go at Merton Park primary School after school art club we collaborated to make several giant collograph printed works. We began by looking at the work of artists Fichilli and Weiss in two sessions where we investigated The Way Things Go and Playing Seriously. We then went on to look […]

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Pop-Up Print Studio: Day 2, Key stage 1

For our younger children artist Louise Pasquill introduced the children to the ancient art of Gyotaku. A technique once used by fishermen in Japan to identify fish! Don’t forget to look at what we got up to in Day 1. Louise showed the children how to make clay fish, concentrating on adding texture to the surface […]

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Pop-Up Print Studio: Day 2, Key stage 2

In day 2 of our Pop-Up print studio, artist Nicole Line taught us how to screen print. The day was full of experimentation. We revelled in mess, colour and design and learnt how therapeutic it was to play with materials, relax and have fun. Don’t forget to check out Day 1, to see the Heat […]

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Pop-Up Print Studio: Key stage 1 , Day 1

Artist Sabrina-Smith Noble collaborated with Nicole Line to lead day one of our Pop-Up Print studio for Key Stage 1 children. Children began by looking at art works inspired by our under-water theme. They then experimented with tearing and layering tissue and crepe paper to create a deep water scene, thinking about depth and light. […]

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Pop Up Print Studio: Key stage 2, Day 1

Artist Nicole Line led day one of our Pop-Up Print Studio, introducing the children to the art of using a heat press to transfer designs onto fabric and paper. Nicole began by introducing the heat press And demonstrating different effects to dye paper. Spraying Dripping Sponging. The children then experimented with the different effects to […]

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Happy Mother’s Day from Children’s Art School

These beautiful collograph prints made lovely mother’s day cards for some of our Children’s Art School Mums.                                                       The handmade ones are always the best! They simply chose their favourite […]

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Ingenious inventions

The last two weeks at Merton Park School we have been focusing on making our own invention to make into a large scale collograph printed work. We began by looking back at our initial drawings of machine parts and selecting shapes to work with. In quick drawings we investigated how shapes could fit together. We […]

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Reasons to write…. when you are 6!

So many times I have seen my children put in the position where they have to write something. They often feel totally uninspired and lost for ideas. One of the activities developed by Sabrina Smith Noble in our holiday photography course gave my son the inspiration he needed to write one of his first stories, […]

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Public Art

At the end of last term in Pelham Primary School, children played with scale and illusion when siting photographs of their cardboard sculptures into landscape settings. See how the sculptures were made in a previous session: Reimagining Miro This follows in the photomontage tradition used by many sculptors and architects like Mies Van de Rohe (images below) […]

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Fun with Photography – Day 2

In day 2 of our half term Fun With Photography course, with photographic artist Marysa Dowling we looked at manipulating images by hand, playing with scale and composition. To see day one’s activities click here. We looked at some interesting archive images, sourced from the internet and imagined ourselves within the scene. We drew some […]

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Fun with Photography – Day 1

Photographic artist Marysa Dowling spent the first day of our half term course exploring composition, framing, movement, emotion, storytelling, lighting and the use of props. The first half of this post will focus on the 7-12 age group…so scroll down if you are more interested in the under 6 age group. Marysa began with an […]

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Beautiful Collographs

This week at Merton Park After School Art Club we learnt to make a collograph print. We refined our plates made last week that were based on our drawings of rusty old car parts. We then mixed some acrylic paint to the right consistency and applied it to our plate. We made our paper wet […]

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Year 1 Colour Explosions

  In Sabrina Smith Noble’s Art Club for year 1 children we’ve started the lead-up to spring by experimenting with colour and trying out different materials. The children have practised mixing primary colours to make a colour wheel and then experimented with complimentary colour schemes using pastels. Each week they’ve tried a different material and […]

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Reimagining Miro

At Pelham School we have been inspired by Miro, his use of shape and his limited colour palette We started our first session with a dice game and different shapes inspired by Miro. The children created their own fantasy creature or person using shapes indicated by the number of the dice.   We then coloured […]

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Tuttle and Texture

We have been looking at tools, machines and parts of old cars. We made some drawings and looked at the variety of shapes and textures.   This week we began to imagine other ways of creating texture. We looked at Richard Tuttle’s work, who has recently had an exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery and Tate Modern. […]

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The Way Things Go 2

Following on from our first session in this project where we played with purpose, using objects to build stable but precarious structures, we now experimented with making these structures move. The simple task of making balls move, through a chain of events, across a table kept us challenged for nearly and hour and a half! […]

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The Way Things Go

Continuing from last weeks session at Merton Park Primary school where we started to think about structures and moving machines, we made some drawings of car parts and tools. I spent a surprisingly enjoyable half hour rummaging around in a car junk yard and found some fabulous things to draw. The objects helped us look […]

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Playing Seriously

In our first session back at Merton Park Primary school we began to explore ideas around building, structures and machinery. I have been interested the idea of ‘serious play’ for a while in the work that I do; that is playing with ideas or materials with a purpose. Many others who deal with creativity in […]

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Cut-Up and Re-build Christmas – Day 2

Day two of our Christmas Art Course led by artist Abigail Hunt continued to push children’s ideas about what could be done with paper. Click here for information about Day 1. Sabrina Smith-Noble began the day by encouraging children to warm up their minds and bodies. Children drew on each others back, then transferred the […]

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Cut-up and Re-build Christmas – Day 1

Artist Abigail Hunt has been leading our two day Christmas art course for children supported by Sabrina Smith Noble who has adapted activities for younger children. We have been investigating the limitless possibilities of paper for decoration, sculpture, collage and problem solving, sometimes with a curious christmas twist. We began the day by stretching our imaginations […]

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Performing Art

In our last week before Christmas our young artists at Merton Park Art Club performed their improvised puppet show to their parents. Click through the links below to see how this project developed. We have been Responding to music Making puppets Creating art with words Last week we put the finishing touches to our puppets […]

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Light, colour and shape

This term at Pelham Primary school children were inspired by Matisse and his use of light, colour and shape. His exhibition at Tate Modern: Cut Outs in the Summer was an inspiration to us all at Children’s Art School. The children watched a film of Matisse cutting directly into paper and then experimented with similar […]

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Breaking the rules

This week at Merton Park’s after School Art Club we finished our collaged puppets that we started last week. See last weeks Blog: A little Puppet Happening for more details.                     Our aim is to create a nonsense performance including words, puppets and music. We listened again […]

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A little puppet happening!

Inspired by a family day at the Whitechapel Gallery‘s Hannah Hoch exhibition last year; at Merton Park after school art club we decided to begin a project on puppets by looking at Hannah Hoch and the Da Da movement and create a little ‘happening’ of our own.                   […]

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Wire Heads

This week year 1 children at Pelham School had a look at sculptor Alexander Calder’s ‘Little Head’ and other wire portrait art. They bent the wire into different face shapes, like we had practiced a few weeks ago. See the blog post Drawing with Wire earlier this term.   They used bits and bobs and different thicknesses of […]

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Marks to music

After taking my children to family events as part of Tate Britain’s Big and Small programme, I was inspired by composer Neil Luck and artist Dan Scott’s work for children that invites them to respond to music through mark making.                   My son was totally engrossed by […]

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Collaborating on Circles

You may have been following our circle painting project. We have been working with Veena every week at our after school Art Club. You can see where we started by clicking these links: All about Circles Joining Circles Our final collaborative circle paintings came together this week. We cut our giant paintings into pieces so […]

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Reshuffling Picasso

Sabrina Smith-Noble worked with year one children to create these lovely bold images Taking inspiration from ancient Aztec masks and Picasso’s deconstruction portraits; we created theses pieces by making masks which we sliced up and reshuffled to create new characters and shapes. We used strong contrasting colours and patterns of lines to make them stand out.

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Wild Art on Wimbledon Common _ Day 2

  For details of day 1 click here. We arrived with trepidation on Tuesday morning hoping that our animals had survived the night. To our relief they were still hanging at the edges of our camp, looking even more beautiful as the morning sun shone through the leaves. It was quite magical setting up for […]

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Wild Art on Wimbledon Common – Day 1

On a perfect Autumn day our group met on Wimbledon Common for 2 days of art making using natural materials found in the woodland. We discussed the Samhuin idea of souls trapped inside animals and how we could release them by making an image. During a short exploration of our surroundings we foraged for basic […]

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Joining Circles

The last couple of weeks at Pelham School we have continued our circle theme, working individually and together. We designed a paper plate using cut up, brightly coloured wrapping paper. We layered and varnished with glue  The following week we began to work together on large sheets of brown paper drawing around many different sized […]

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Collaborative Cut-Out

At Merton Park this week our giant collaborative cut out is  finished. Look back through previous blogs to see how it began. We worked hard to see the picture as one large piece and made decisions on the best place to put each piece. We learnt that it can be hard to compromise our feelings […]

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Drawing with Scissors

This term we have been looking at organic shapes, that originated from our drawings of leaves.   We have used different printing techniques to create different images. This week we watched Henri Matisse drawing with scissors and experimented with his techniques -cutting into paper that we had painted ourselves. First we mixed colours and painted […]

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Drawing with wire

Our littlest artists at Pelham Primary School’s year 1 art club have been experimenting with drawing and looking at themselves. They began by taking lines for a walk out in the playground. The children looked at sections of the line art they had created outside and used colouring-in with pencil to make them more interesting. […]

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Screen printing round 2

At Merton Park after school art club this week we continued our printing experiments based on our drawings of leaves. I showed the group images of Turner Prize Nominee Ciara Phillips’ screen prints that I went to see this week at Tate Britain. We talked about the different uses of screen printing on fabric, wallpaper, […]

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All about circles

In our second and third sessions this term at Pelham primary school we continued to explore mark making using the circle as a starting point. Firstly we used charcoal, graphite sticks and chalk on black and white circles then we used felt tips and pastels on a variety of different coloured circles  We were very […]

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Screenprinting

At Merton Park this week we learnt how to make a simple screen print using designs made from our drawings of leaves. This time we had to really simplify the shapes. We made a positive and negative template.                       Screen printing is excellent for collaborating […]

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Positive and Negative

Our Merton Park artists were experimenting with positive and negative this week in our continued exploration of lines and shapes. We did some more drawings of leaves trying to work bigger and bolder. We then experimented with drawing with string. It helped us to really look at simplifying the lines and shapes we saw. We […]

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Making Marks

Pelham School’s after school art clubs got off to an experimental start with all sorts of marks being made in all sorts of places. Key stage 2 took part in a collaborative drawing circle, where marks were made and shared on discs of card that were passed around.   Key stage 1 took lines for […]

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Drawing Leaves – pencil, pastel and scissors.

For the first session at Merton Park’s after school art club we decided to make the most of the late September sun and do some drawing outside. We decided to look at leaves and varying shaped they make. We started to look at lines and shapes using graded pencils We tried short sketches and longer […]

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Wild Art on Wimbledon Common

This half term Children’s Art School have teamed up with the BIG DRAW to go WILD on Wimbledon Common with Artist and Forest School practitioner Philippa Snell.                     I have always loved Autumn on Wimbledon Common and enjoy exploring with my two boys; making dens, soaking […]

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Art of the Game – Day 2

  On day 2 of The Art of the Game – our summer Art course for Children devised by artist Sarah Carne we began by sorting and arranging the numbers into a board. It was easy to see the mistakes we had made! But we found solutions for all the little glitches! We then began […]

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Art of the Game – Day One

On this beautiful summers day artist Sarah Carne began our children’s art course by involving them in games to get us making decisions and choices. We then worked in teams to think about things that make us happy and healthy. This will form the basis for a giant game, which is to be about decision […]

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Curators for the day

At Merton Park Primary School we became curators for this weeks session, putting on an exhibition in the school hall for teachers and parents. We arranged our work to make it look interesting We included pictures of ourselves working We made posters, labels and leaflets We linked our collaborative map pieces together to make a […]

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Summer Book

To finish our project at Dundonald Primary School the children designed and made a summer holiday activity book using many of the techniques learnt this term. First we planned out some ideas for the book   Then we used paper cutting techniques and pastels to transfer our ideas to the real book. Each page was […]

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Mapping Merton Park – collaborative painting

The last 2 weeks at Merton Park Art Club we have been working in groups to create a large memory map based on the work we have been doing this term. The work was based on 2 walks we made around our local area.   Each group took an area and planned a collage with […]

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Pop up stories

Last week artist Ania Bas and the children at Dundonald Art Club continued to experiment with the development of characters by playing the traditional drawing game Exquisite Corpse developed by the surrealists. We then continued with our weekly life drawing exercises- our poses are getting more elaborate! We used paintings and drawings from the last […]

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Abstracting Merton Park

Our Mapping Merton Park project continued last week by adding an abstract element. We looked to artist Shiraz Bayjoo, who ran our holiday course Mapping My World last Easter. We looked at some collage artists and discussed ways to lay out a collage to give a message and look interesting. We then looked at some […]

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The Art of the Game: Will you go up? Or down?

This Summer artist Sarah Carne will explore in The Art of the Game –  our 2 day children’s art Course with children – the possibility of building a human scale game similar to snakes and ladders incorporating issues that interest them. These ideas could could be as broad as recycling, climate change, school uniform or  the length of their […]

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Little Pelham artists

Look at what the youngest members of The Children’s Art School have been up to at Pelham Primary School with Sabrina Smith-Noble We made thumb and stick pots and mixed our own terracotta paint. We experimented with 3D weaving and practiced our skills with materials of different properties. Long boats. Then it was time to […]

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Making fish swim

At Pelham After School Club we have been experimenting with stop motion animation techniques. To develop our Underwater World project. We used a simple free iPad app to experiment with short movies using our paper fish. Click on the links to watch our first attempt at animation. Pelhamstopmotion-3 Pelhamstopmotion-5 Pelhamstopmotion-6 We will develop these ideas […]

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Mixed Media Mapping

In this weeks session at Merton Park Primary School we began by writing our postcards that we painted on our walk last week. We will send them to someone we love to brighten up their day! We looked at historical images and maps of Merton Park sourced from the Merton Memories Website. We cut a […]

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Painting Outside

In our Mapping Merton Park Project we continued our walks to collect material for our visual maps of the area. This week we made 2 studies in John Innes Park The Bandstand       The Henry Quartermain designed achway   We painted with watercolours onto watercolour paper postcards. We will write and send these […]

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Stories and Characters

Ania Bas has been developing characters, situations and scenes with her group at Dundonald School. She has been working with drawing, collage and paint to create fantastical creatures and placing them into different imaginary scenarios. Here’s a reminder of how some of the characters began their lives. Every session starts with drawing Annabel and the […]

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Mapping Merton Park: collage

    At Merton Park After School Club we began to incorporate some of the material we have gathered from our walks into a large collaged memory map. A warm up activity involved completing a photograph cut in half from one of our walks to jog our memory We then began to cut up copies […]

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Signs and Symbols

Signs ans Symbols – Year 1 Building works are under way at Pelham and there signs going up all around. We’ve been looking at the shapes and colours that signs use to give us information. We had fun mixing them up to change the meanings and practiced wax resist on paper at the same time. […]

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Mapping Merton Park

We are working on a project to make a visual map of our local area and our place in it. We began by drawing a memory map of our journey to school We then went on a walk around our local area. We stopped and made 10 minute drawings as we went Can you tell […]

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Underwater Worlds 2

See how children at Pelham Primary School are developing their underwater worlds with artist Veena Scialo. There are plans to develop an environment for these beautiful creatures then collaborate to make a stop frame animation. We can’t wait to see how this develops! We have so much fun!

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Developing a Character

Artist Ania Bas began working with the children at Dundonald Primary School to develop a character. Ania’s warm up activities really get the brain working and thinking creatively. This week we drew a room simultaneously with both hands. We then did some life drawing to help us look closely at people. We then looked at […]

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Simply Painting

At Merton Park After School Club this week, visiting artist Katriona Beale worked with the children to explore paint in preparation for our ‘Art Walks’ later this term. We worked on – an exercise mixing paints – making up new colours and new names for them. – an exercise about tone – trying to show one […]

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Underwater worlds

Children at Pelham school art club have been creating designs for fishes. In our first session we copied shapes of fishes from black and white images. We then gave them patterns and colours from our imagination. We made templates for the shapes we wanted to make with clay. In our second session we rolled the […]

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The Seriousness of Play

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Click here to read:  Seriousness of Play – Annabel Johnson Annabel Johnson is Co-director of Children’s Art School Seriousness of Play is Published in AD magazine, issue 10 2014, NSEAD (The National Society for Education in Art and Design)  

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Simply drawing

This week at Merton Park Primary School we experimented with drawing materials and concentrated on looking hard and describing at what we could see. Drawing George! Experimenting with lines, textures and materials. Drawing our school – it is nice to finally be outside. I talked to the children while they were drawing – constantly asking […]

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Sculpting with paper

Artist Ania Bas is working with children at Dundonald Primary School this term on project to make a new children’s picture book. She will help the children develop characters, storyline and  backgrounds. She will explore collage, painting and paper sculpting in both 2 and 3 dimensions. Stories will be inspired by music and the children will […]

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Mapping My World: Day 2

In day two of of our Easter Holiday Course, children worked with artist Shiraz Bayjoo to complete their final piece – a personalised identity map of themselves and their world. An A3 board was prepared with a background colour We discussed our ideas from yesterday with new friends Then worked on the board using techniques […]

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Mapping My World: Day 1

Artist Shiraz Bayjoo led children in a two day exploration of identity, collage and paint. See what we got up to on day one! Shiraz introduced the children to collage artists and techniques Children had brought in a collection of personal items with significance to them, which we copied and photographed for use in our […]

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Beautiful Bunting

  At Pelham School the children have been busy designing and making their own bunting.  This tied in with earlier work we did designing a new world. The flags would decorate the streets in their alternative place for a parade or party. We used fabric, and ironed on motifs to make our flags. Paper versions […]

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Tile painting

We used bright coloured Acrylic paint to put the finishing touches to our clay tiles We uses tiny brushes to get paint into all the nooks and crannies!   We had to be VERY careful not to mix colours and think about the order that we added the colour. This is how they turned out. […]

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Happy Mother’s Day from Children’s Art School

Children at Merton Park Primary School made Mother’s Day cards out of their very own printed personalised logo. Mum’s received a personalised card created by their own child…much nicer than anything bought in the shops we hope! We think it’s always better to create rather than consume!

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Coming of Spring

This term in Pelham School’s KS 1 Art club we’ve been celebrating the coming of Spring and have been inspired by a Native American story the ‘Legend of the Elves’. We made our very own patch of spring garden and created original flowers to grow in it.   We’ve made Grass Sprite crowns to camouflage […]

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3D Logo

This week children transferred an idea for their own personalised logo onto a clay tile. We used rolling guides to roll out a tile of equal thickness.   We cut it to the shape we wanted.   We carved our design and sculpted some parts in relief   We used our logo designs to help […]

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Year 1 Artists

Year 1 children at Pelham School continue to experiment with materials and techniques to create some beautiful work and have lots of fun. Playing with clay Exploring textures and fabrics Spring has sprung 

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No Ordinary World

Last term at Pelham Primary School’s After School Art Club children designed alternative planets and worlds.   They worked collaboratively to create new languages and alternative realities.   They used previously created logo’s and identities to populate their worlds.                                 […]

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Logo me

The last 2 weeks at Merton Park after school club have been spent looking at logo’s and designing a logo that represents ourself. We looked at the logo’s all around us and where the designs came from.  We used our sketch book to sketch out ideas about our favourite foods, hobbies, colours and toys.   […]

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Magazines for Kids by Kids – Day Two

Artist Ania Bas continued to lead the team of editors in the production of their magazine. The group began to bond through decision making and collaborative action. Teams were formed for specific tasks and the children worked together to inspire and advise each other. Slowly ‘The Artist Times’ emerged! Children developed their own content based […]

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Magazines for Kids By Kids – Day one

At the Children’s Art School Half Term course children worked as a team of editors to design and create their own magazine by kids for kids. We looked at magazines and planned what we would like to include.                         We included puzzles, cartoons, comic […]

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Toy stories 2

At Merton Park Primary School work on compiling our comic strips began.                 We cut out our photographed scenes and sequenced into a simple zig-zag book adding speech, thought bubbles and a simple narrative.                           The […]

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Magazines by Kids for Kids: Half term course

We are interested in looking at the content that is produced for children’s magazines and asking children to cast a critical eye over the things supposedly produced for them. We will then ask them design their own visual magazine that will be printed professionally. Ania Bas will lead our half term course which will focus […]

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Toy stories

Last week children at Merton Park Primary School used toys to create stories, and experimented with collage techniques to use in a backdrop.   This week we completed our backdrop and developed a storyboard from which to sequence our scenes.                     We photographed each stage as […]

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Lines and Shapes with Key Stage 1

Sabrina Smith-Noble is working with Key Stage 1 at Pelham Primary School Week 1 Lines – This term we’re looking at the basics beginning with lines. We experimented with taking lines for a walk and seeing the different types of line we could draw and make. Week 2 Shapes – Moving on from last week’s […]

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Pattern yourself

Artist Barbara Veena Scialo is working on on an identity project, creating patterns and logos with children at Pelham Primary School’s After School Club. We started off thinking about different elements which represent our self, our names, favourite colours, animals. In the first session children worked on large sheets in 3 groups to develop ideas. […]

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Creative play and story building

I have long been fascinated by the way children play, build their own scenes and create stories as they go. I often look at the remnants of my children’s play and imagine scripts for many a story or film. It saddens me to see creative play lessening in the lives of our children with the intoxicating […]

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Objects and Abstract

Children played with objects to create faces, thinking about shape colour and mood. They drew around the objects and used oil pastels to create bright abstract portraits                                          

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Blind Portraits

The Children in our new club at Merton Park Primary School introduced themselves by drawing each other blindfolded. We stared at each other for 2 minutes looking closely at our features. It was hard not to giggle! We then blindfolded each other and drew what we could remember.   We didn’t have to worry what […]

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Key stage 1 Art club

At Pelham School’s After School Club for year 1. Children experiment with materials and techniques to explore the changing seasons. Activities are led by Sabrina Smith Noble Capturing falling leaves in a kinetic mobile. Painting with tissue paper  Creating random and irregular shapes through lines. Creating stained glass inspired cards.

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What makes you…you?

In this one off workshop for 9year old boys we looked at logo’s and designed one for ourselves. We begun by checking our clothes for popular logo’s and talked about how these might have come about. We then sketched ideas to show aspects of our lives. We combined and simplified our drawings and made them […]

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Pelham Willow Private View

The Children from Pelham After School Art Club invited parents and teachers to view their finished project at a special Private View. We arranged our work ourselves and served snacks to our guests.          

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Art that shouts!

This week at Pelham’s  after school club we continued to work on our collaborative collage about our much loved Willow tree. We experimented with pastels to draw into photocopies of our drawings of bark, branches and leaves.   We worked on sections of the collage together. We continued to look at how artists like Bob and […]

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Children’s Art School gets Christmassy

At  Donhead School Christmas fair children took part in an industrious Christmas workshop using colour cut out and printmaking techniques to create cards and decorations.

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Collaborative Collage

Pelham School After School Club, Nov 28th We drew together all the work we have done on the Willow tree so far and begun a group collage piece. We worked in 4 groups to collage photocopies of our drawings and clay work along with magazine cuttings and mixed papers. We drew into the photocopies using […]

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Year 1 Art Club at Pelham

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Week 1 – ‘Autumn is a second spring, where every leaf becomes a flower’   We talked about the signs of autumn and documented ‘autumn flowers’ through drawing, rubbing, tracing, collage and layers. This week we collected fallen leaves and used them to create ephemeral characters.  We began trying to capture and preserve some of […]

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Printing Tree Motifs

This week at Pelham Schools’ Art club we looked back at our drawings of the willow tree and selected a motif to make into a printing tile. We carved the design into poly-block and printed onto strips of paper.

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Layered drawings

14 November. Pelham After School Art Club We layered different drawing materials to create new effects when drawing twigs, leaves and bark collected from the willow tree in the school grounds.

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Bark Impressions

14 November. At Pelham Schools’ Art Club this week we painted  clay impressions taken from the bark of the willow tree. We looked at texture and colour and painted using tiny brushes to emphasise the variety in the texture.     Looking carefully at texture When all our pieces were finished we arranged them into […]

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Blind Drawing

7th November Pelham School Art Club We studied branches, bark and leaves collected from the willow tree in the school grounds. We masked our paper by fixing a shield to our pen or pencil and made drawings that forced us to look at the object and not worry about what we were drawing.  

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The Pelham Willow

This term at Pelham Primary Schools’ art club we will be commemorating the Pelham Willow tree, before it is sadly felled to make room for much needed classrooms. We started by documenting the tree in preparation for the project.We drew quick sketches and made rubbings outside in fine liner, charcoal, wax and pencil. We took […]

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KABOOM!

Cutting out collages

In a fantastic comic workshop collages were created to inspire characters. Illustrators Mark Oliver and Mark Long led the way…                                                    

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Weird and wonderful creatures

Imaginary animals kids art clubs, kids art workshops, kids art courses, kids art classes, children's art clubs, children's art workshops, children's art courses, children's art classes, art tuition for children, art tuition for kids, after-school art clubs, after school art clubs, holiday art workshops, holiday art courses, holiday art classes, art for children, fun for kids, activities for kids, kids holiday activities, things for kids to do in the holidays, things for kids to do after school, creative kids, artists teach kids, artists teach children, London, Wimbledon, SW19, South West London

Have you ever seen a Liodragon? It was invented by Pelham after-school Art Club. Balloons, cartons, newspaper and cardboard were covered in papier-mâché, then painted. Before long all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures were appearing!                                                 […]

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Imaginary Buildings

Kids art workshops, children’s holiday art courses, imaginary buildings, growth of cities from rural to urban, architecture, shelters, properties of materials, natural and organic forms, construction techniques, Julia MIllette

The final Easter holiday session explored structures and shelters. We began by cutting out geometric nets and constructing three dimensional forms.   Drawing simple shelters gave us the chance to look at their structures. We thought about how framing can build a structure around a square, circle, hexagon, square or triangle.   We discussed different properties of […]

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Extraordinary Animals

Imaginary animal puppet created at the Children's Art School holiday art course led by Julia Millette

In our fourth Easter day we invented animals. We started thinking about how to invent imaginary animals by playing a drawing game. We each drew an animal’s head, then passed our drawing to the next person who drew an animal’s body… Then we looked more carefully at animals by drawing them. We shared ideas for our […]

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The Art of Book Illustration

Sharing illustrations at Children's Art School holiday illustration course led by Pencil and Help

Our third Easter Holiday Art Course was all about book illustration. Led by artists and educators, Mark Oliver and Mark Long AKA Pencil and Help, we learned the papercut illustration technique and worked together to create our very own illustrated book. We started off looking at examples of papercut illustration, like these, and thinking about […]

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Tricking the Eye

shadow puppet show at the Children's Art School holiday art course with artist, Karen Logan

The second of our Easter Holiday Art Courses was all about creating illusions, led by artist, Karen Logan. We began by looking at Victorian thaumatropes for inspiration. We then made thaumatropes of our own. We used themes like a robber behind bars and a tree and leaves to create the illusion of a single image when […]

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Young Fashionistas at Work

Our Easter Holiday Art Courses got off to a glittering start when award-winning Sparkle Specialist and Costume Designer, Charlene Braniff, hosted a day of jewellery design in the art studios at Ricards Lodge High School. Charlene devised 5 short projects for this busy session to introduce a wide range of jewellery-making skills. Project 1 was […]

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Art Eggstravaganza

Decorated Eggs at the Children's Art School after school art club led by artist, Karen Logan

At tonight’s Pelham Art Club we put the relief print blocks that we’d created last week to the test, creating a wonderful variety of repeating patterns. We also had some end-of-term Easter fun too, decorating blown eggs. Artist, Karen Logan, is passionate about printing. She explained three different kinds of print layouts; Block Repeat, Brick Repeat […]

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Relief Printing, Part 1

Making relief print pattern blocks with cardboard and string at the Children's Art School after school art club with artist, Karen Logan

How long is a piece of string? We used loads of different lengths at this week’s Pelham Art Club to create pattern blocks which we’re going to use to make our own relief prints. First, we sketched out some ideas. Artist, Karen Logan, asked us to create one curvy organic design and one using straight […]

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Warp and Weft

Girls weaving at the Children's Art School after school club led by artist, Karen Logan

At today’s Pelham art club, artist Karen Logan introduced us to wonders of warp and weft with a weaving workshop. First we looked at what we were wearing and the difference between the threads of knitted and woven fabrics. We were dressed in character for World Book Day, so had a variety of different textiles […]

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A Tale of Three Tables

Op art tile painting at childrens after school art club led by artist Karen Logan

This week’s after school art club at Pelham was an open session in which artist, Karen Logan, gave children the opportunity to join one of three activities; clay modelling, clay model painting and conducting painting experiments. On the first tables children painted the tiles that they had made before half-term. We’d used air-drying clay which […]

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Amazing Objects

Modelling exercise from sculpture course using everyday objects by artist Karen Logan at the Children's Art School

On Thursday of half-term we transformed everyday objects into an amazing collection of super sculptures with the help of artist, Karen Logan. We started the day with a peek at the work of contemporary British artists Jim Lambie and Laura White. We saw how Jim Lambie transforms our sense of space with his colourful floor […]

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Celebrating Colour

Children exploring colour in painting at Children's Art School holiday course led by artist, Karen Logan

In contrast to Monday’s drawing in black and white course, we spent the Wednesday of half-term investigating colour in painting with artist, Karen Logan. In fact, Karen banned black and white from our palates for the whole day to help us think about how to mix and use paint to achieve different effects. We began […]

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Printing from Nature

Girl showing her finished print at the half-term printmaking workshop at the Children's Art School with artist, Chrys Allen

Tuesday brought glorious sunshine, which was perfect for our Beastly and Beautiful Print-Making course led by artist, Chrys Allen. Not only was our room lovely and light, one of the day’s tasks involved foraging outside for natural shapes and textures to use in our prints. Chrys welcomed everyone to the course with a metre of […]

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3D Drawing

Making still life sketches in the children's art school half term 3D drawing course with artist, Chrys Allan

Our first February half-term course was all about drawing. We spent an illuminating day exploring shape, tone and lines with artist, Chrys Allen. Using only black and white in a series of entertaining activities we discovered how to create 3D forms and a sense of depth in our pictures. We began by making plasticine shapes and illuminating them […]

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Op-Art Tiles

Using templates to make ceramic tiles at the children's art school after school club

At this week’s Pelham Art Club, we used air-drying clay to make patterned tiles. Our designs were inspired by the work of Bridget Riley, an artist who loves playing with optical illusions. We were also influenced by the geometrical designs used in Islamic tiles. Work began, as usual, in our sketchbooks, experimenting with patterns. Once […]

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Spring Printmaking

Print blocks from children's art school club

Pelham Art Club has been printmaking. Our spring theme was inspired by the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries from fifteenth century France, and the appearance of the first green shoots here in London. We began by looking at some mille-fleurs (thousand flowers) designs on the ancient tapestries. And we saw some examples of how these artworks inspire […]

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Back into the Shadows

Boy and puppet at children's after school art club

By popular demand, this week’s Art Club at Pelham returned to the theme of shadow puppets.  Some children had run out of time to finish their creations last week. Others had found working on small puppets tricky and wanted to have another go, creating new designs on a larger scale and using more colour.  So […]

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Shadow Play

Childrens Shadow Play

Yesterday’s theme for the Art Club at Pelham was silhouettes and shadows. We had a great time creating shadow puppets with artist, Karen Logan. We began by developing ideas in our sketchbooks. Once the drawings were complete everyone chose their favourite and transferred it onto black card. We had to think about this a bit […]

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Stories Without Words

At our second January workshop, What Happens Next? we explored how artists can tell stories without words. Artist, Chrys Allen, with the help of Rudi and his guitar, took us on a imaginative journey to create our own storytelling artwork. We began by looking at some intriguing paintings from artists such as Vermeer, Klee, Hopper […]

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In the Mood

We made a creative start to the new year with our Look, Listen and Imagine workshop on 3rd January. Artist, Chrys Allen, led a fascinating day of investigation into how artists create mood in their paintings. We began looking at works of Whistler, Rothko and Kandinsky to see what kind of moods they created in […]

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Art Inspired by Dreams

Artist, Katriona Beales, led two action-packed days of art inspired by dreams in our second autumn half-term course. We began by exploring the work of artists like Chagall and Dali who created fantastical and haunting dreamscapes in their work. We looked at how their paintings made unreal subjects feel strangely realistic, and thought about how […]

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Machines and Inventions

Our first autumn half-term course was all about objects in motion, led by artist, Katriona Beales. We had fun making shapes with our bodies and sketching movement. We were inspired by the crazy machines of Jean Tinguely, and fascinated by the fact that some of them worked and some of them didn’t.  Then we started […]

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All Children Are Artists

The Children's Meal by Pablo Picasso (1903)

Picasso said that, ‘All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.’ We don’t think he was talking about children’s skills. Rather their glorious, questioning and creative  vision of the world and its possibilities. A way of seeing life that the pressures of study, society and work can change […]

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Kids school and holiday art clubs in Wimbledon