Inktober 2021

It’s October and at St John’s Priory we like to take part in #Inktober. The idea of Inktober is to draw every day throughout the month of October using pen and ink. This is a brilliant way to improve your drawing and inking skills. By drawing every day you are able to greatly improve your muscle memory for drawing and work on new styles or techniques.

Children in Year 2 and up have been provided with sketchbooks for the project and this year there will be prizes for the best Inktober books at the end of the month. I will be looking for imaginative interpretations of the prompts, good technical drawing skills and overall improvement.

Here is this years prompt list:

Make sure to share your daily drawings with your friends, family and with myself in our art lessons.

Here are some of the excellent pieces of work I have already seen in the first week:

Keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing more of your Inktober drawings.

Mr Smith

Planetary House Paintings

On the 18th of February 2021 the Perseverance rover safely landed on Mars and helped inspire our school for our Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths (STEAM) week. Across the school the children took part in projects to design and build landers, rovers and habitats for space exploration and in the Art Studio the children worked on artwork and models inspired by space.

With our school houses named after four of the planets in our solar system I thought it would be nice to create some large paintings to represent each of the houses.

The children in the upper school worked together focusing on their own houses painting. They used acrylic paint on canvas and the completed paintings are now proudly on display at school.

Here are some of the other Space Art projects created by the children during STEAM week:

Spaceships by Year 1.

Planets in space by Year 3.

Well done to everyone for their work during all our STEAM projects and their continued hard work!

Mr Smith

‘Artworking’ From Home

The New Year may not be off to the start we would have chosen but that hasn’t stopped our schools talented young artists from producing some brilliant work already!

I am really pleased with the children’s engagement online and proud to share some of their work from January’s projects.

Some wonderful animal artwork including some from children in Year 1 and Frogs from Year 4 and 5.

Some great observational drawing work. The children are putting their understanding of how to apply shading, tone and colours to good use.

Some design technology projects including designing cans for tiger food, making model rivers, rainforest and trench dioramas and upcycling old bottles into handy propagators for growing plants.

In other projects I have seen some excellent collage, abstract painting and illustrations linked to all of our class topics.

I would like to pass on a big thank you and well done to all the children (and their adults who support them) for working so hard and continuing to make me very proud of all of you, even if we can’t be together in the Art Studio at the moment.

Take care everyone and keep posting!

Mr Smith

Winter Round Up

With the Autumn term at an end, I wanted share some of the many wonderful Art and DT projects the children have been working on this term.

Vibrant city skylines at sunset by Year 1.

Year 1 also learnt about axels and wheels this term while making their own model racing cars.

Year 2 Enjoyed making working lighthouses and floating pirate ships.

Paper Mache Heroes and Villains by Year 3.

Native American Totem Poles by Year 4

Abstract roller-coaster art and K’nex funfair by Year 5

Mixed media artwork titled ‘Aurora borealis’ by Year 6

It has been great working with the children this term and I am very proud of everyone’s hard work. I look forward to seeing everyone in the new year and starting the next set of projects.

Have a lovely break everyone and happy new year!

Mr Smith

Inktober 2020

Every October at St John’s Priory we like to take part in #Inktober. The idea of Inktober is to draw each day throughout the month of October using pen and ink. This is both excellent fun and a brilliant way to improve your drawing skills. By drawing every day you are able to greatly improve your muscle memory for drawing and work on new styles or techniques.

The prompt list gives you a starting point for each day of the month.

I was thrilled to see so many of our pupils engage with the challenge again this year and putting their imaginations and drawing skills to excellent use. Here is a sample of some of the children’s Inktober works from this year:

Thank you all so much for sharing your artwork with me and working so hard at developing your artwork.

Well done everyone!

Mr Smith

Art Scholarship Club

The SJP Art Scholarship Club is for pupils who show particular care and dedication in their Art and Design Technology lessons and who wish to work towards securing Art or DT scholarships in their senior schools.

The portfolio requirements vary from one school to another but demonstrating the pupils enthusiasm and creativity are always key.

“We get to know other artists from other years and pick up inspiration from them.” EC (Year 5)

In helping pupils prepare the best portfolio they can, they are encouraged to cover a wide range of influences, styles and mediums.

Pupils work on a wide range of projects including painting and drawing, sculpture, collage and mixed media. We study a broad variety of influences such as the natural world, classic art, modern art and modern life.

“Art and DT scholarship club is fun because you can get help from Mr Smith with things you didn’t know how to do and then do it yourself next time.” FC (Year 6)

“Art Club has been fun because we get to work on whatever art projects we want and to be creative. Mr Smith helped me to plan out my portfolio and gave me a good idea of what order to put my work and how to present it.” FT (Year 6)

• 

“Mr Smith helps me with my drawing and shows me different ways to draw.” RT (Year 6)

• 

“You get to do things you wouldn’t normally get to do in an art lesson and work on your own projects. It’s a nice place to do art and get inspiration.” MM (Year 5)

If you have any questions about the SJP Art Scholarship Club do not hesitate to get in touch.

Keep up the creative work everyone!

Mr Smith

Inktober 2019

Every October, artists all over the world take on the #Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month. 31 drawings in 31 days is a great way to improve your drawing skills and share your journey with your friends and family. At St Johns Priory I like to get the children involved with Inktober, drawing and sharing their ideas within school. This year the children have been provided with a small sketchbook and prompt list each to record their ink drawings. Its fantastic to see everyone working so hard!

Here’s some of the children’s work so far. Can you guess which prompt words they were using?

I would love to share more of the children’s work so don’t forget to bring me your work in school or email me so that I can add it to our gallery.

 

Look forward to seeing even more great Inktober work soon,

Mr Smith

Natural Art

This week, our children have been studying the theme of ‘NATURE,’ in particular animals and plants and making sculptures using natural materials.

We took Year 1’s Art lesson outside and used clay as well as sticks, stones and anything else they could find in our flower beds to make these spooky Bogart heads to tie in with their ‘Enchanted Woodland’ topic. Great work!

After looking at some of the natural sculptures of Andy Goldsworthy, Year 3 were inspired to use natural materials including stones and flowers to make these wonderfully colourful abstract sculptures of their own.

Well done everybody and we look forward to sharing some stop frame animation that our Little Conkers have been busy working on in the next blog!

Mr Smith

A Colourful Space

Another busy term over with lots of lovely work to put up in the Art room. I now have lots of satellites joining all the spaceships hanging from the beams, as well as some beautiful mixed media space paintings from Year 5.

 

Year 1 made these superb collages while learning about hot and cold colours and how to use the contrast between them.

 

Finally here are a couple of beautiful pieces of work from some of our Year 6 pupils.

Well done to all the children at St John’s Priory for their continued effort and hard work!

Mr Smith

History Week and Warwick Art Exhibition

Last week was History Week at St John’s Priory School, with lots of amazing trips and activities for the children all across the school. In their Art and Design Technology lessons last week Year One and Two designed and painted their own Viking shields and they look great!

Also last week, as part of studying the Victorians, Year Three and Four have decorated small boxes using decoupage.

As part of History week I took the opportunity to take an old Macintosh computer into school to show the children. The Macintosh Plus 1MB computer was the first computer I used as a child and featured a 9 inch black and white screen, peripheral mouse and keyboard and some relatively simple computer games by modern standards. The children had fun playing Asteroids.

Finally, over the weekend we were fortunate to have some of our Artwork featured in Warwick Schools ‘Exhibition of Young Local Artists’. Lighthouses by Year 2. Wire sea creatures by Year 4 and Día de Muertos Skulls by Year 6.

dav

ozedf

dav

cof

dav

Thank you to all of the children at St John’s Priory for their ongoing hard work!

Mr Smith