Life Drawing with 6th form

The A Level Fine Art course includes weekly training in the discipline of Life Drawing. Here are some examples of work our students have made during their weekly sessions, where they have focused on proportion, drawing gestures, postures and movement.

Photograms, Pinholes and Camera Obscuras!

During the L5-6 Day we had a number of U5 students undertaking a number of Photography activities, which included :

Creating photograms in the Darkroom, inspired by some of the earliest photography experiments by Fox Talbot, which also linked in with our photography trip to Lacock, the birthplace of modern photography, earlier in the year.

Some students also enjoyed working in the Photography studio, exploring the creative possibilities inherent in the use of manual camera control and particularly with use of very long exposure times.

Other primitive analogue technologies were also explored by first creating a Camera obscura from a shoe box and then using modern technology, in the form of iphones and photoshop, to bring alive this earliest of photographic techniques.

Andy Warhol Workshop

Inspired by later works of Andy Warhol in the private collection currently on display at The Ashmolean Museum,  6th Form Art students  took part in a technical silk screen printing workshop to learn how to replicate these iconic images. Through closely studying both the subject matter and techniques used, they explored  ways in which he was able to combine photographic imagery with the textural and painterly surfaces represented. The practical one day workshop gave students an insight into mixed-media silk screen printing and they had fun manipulating a number of iconic contemporary images, including both the Queen and Donald Trump!

St Ives Tour 2016

L5 Art Textile and Art students embarked on the annual trip to St Ives in May half term. Mrs Turnbull and Mrs and Mrs Taylor, took 17 girls along the coast on the train, on a cultural tour of this world famous part of Cornwall. The girls were able to make observational studies of the Modernist bronzes of Barbara Hepworth in her beautiful sculpture garden, have first hand experience of throwing pots at the Bernard Leach Pottery, as well as enjoy the tropical plant forms in the Amazon Biome at The Eden Project. One of the trip highlights however, was our visit to Pothmeor Studios, where girls were given an invaluable insight into 'The St Ives School', followed by a practical workshop and walking tour of the town. Students learned how to abstract the landscape by breaking it down into the simplest of forms, using artists such as Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron as inspiration.

Activities Week trip to V & A

L6 visited the 'Botticelli Reimagined' exhibtion at V & A as part of activities week. They were able to explore the variety of ways in which artists and designers from the Pre-Raphaelites to the present have responded to the artistic legacy of  Botticelli. This is the largest Botticelli exhibition in Britain since 1930. It includes around 50 original works by Botticelli from great collections across the world shown alongside more recent masterpieces of art and design including work by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, René Magritte, Elsa Schiaparelli, Andy Warhol and Cindy Sherman.

While they were there, students also had the opportunity to see 'Undressed: A brief History of Underwear'. It was fascinating to see how the silhouette of the body has evolved through fashion across the ages, as demonstrated by intricately hand-made pieces on show. The exhibition explored dress reformers and designers such as Poitier, who argued for the beauty of the natural body, as well as entrepreneurs, inventors and innovators who have played a critical role in the development of increasingly more effective and comfortable underwear. Below is a 'cage crinoline' made from linen and steel. Other pieces were constructed from whale bone and the students marveled at how women were able to wear  some of the pieces, which must have been highly restrictive and very uncomfortable!

Architecture Day with STORE

This year’s architecture day, run by Rain Wu and James Shaw from STORE CIC a London-based association of artists, architects and designers, was an exciting, and very absorbing, hands on practical workshop for prospective architecture and design students.  An enthusiastic group of Lower Sixth took part collaborating closely to create their version of a full scale arch for Headington.  After the introduction to the brief from Rain and James, the students quickly got down to work experimenting with ways of turning lengths of spaghetti fixed with plasticine into architectural maquettes. The pasta broke and the structures came tumbling down, stretching both patience and imagination, however, through trial and error a design was formulated combining some of the best features of several maquettes.

The students split into two teams and after some lively discussion to ensure their two sections would fit together, they successfully built a base and towers for the arch aluminium tubing Risking the weather, but still unsure exactly how to span their arch, they moved outside and began to build full size using lengths of aluminium joined with tape wrapped in protective foil.  Once the base and towers were complete, the ideas for the top of the arch were evolved practically through review and debate.  Higher and higher they went, climbing ladders to complete the fixings and the higher they built the more exciting the structure became. Everyone pulled together working extremely hard to get finished as the weather began to change.  Undeterred by the wind and rain, the group pushed on to complete the top section. Finally, very wet, but extremely proud and satisfied the builders of “ The Arc de Headington” went inside to dry off after a very informative, enjoyable and fun day thanks to Rain and James.