Stations of the Cross Day One

Today was day one of the 'Stations of the Cross' painting project at St Marys Catholic School, Batley. I worked with 52 pupils creating drawings and initial sketches for an ambitious set of paintings depicting the 14 Stations of the Cross. Some amazing work, a great bunch of children and some wonderful (if not gruesome) images. More to come!

'Stations of the Cross' Starts Tomorrow

Following an initial introduction to the project earlier in the week, my work with 60 pupils from St Marys Catholic School in Batley starts proper tomorrow. We plan to make 14 monochrome paintings depicting the themes from The Stations of the Cross (which I am not too familiar with) on A1 cardboard panels using acrylic paint and posca pens.

Below is a selection of (continuous line drawing) self portraits made by the kids during a brief 25 minute drawing frenzy. More fun to come!

Habitats - The Short Film

And here is the complete film. The children at Hyrstmount Junior School worked incredibly hard during the project. The film is a credit to them!

Habitats - Hyrstmount Animation Project - Day 6

Today has been the last day of the animation project at Hyrstmount Junior School. The children have recorded the narration for their film which they have delivered in a documentary style. They have also photographed the titles for the credit sequence and gathered together all the artwork they have created throughout the project, ready for a wonderful display in school.

Sound recording

This has been a fantastic project and the children have been a joy to work with. Here's a run down of everything they have been involved in throughout the creation of their Habitats Film...

Continuous Line Drawing

Designing characters

Exploring animals and their habitats through large drawings

Drawing animals in their habitats with berol pens and a water wash

Designing cardboard characters for the replacement animation technique

Creating the backgrounds

Animating the characters

Animating the characters on set

The children have also been involved in recording the narration, researching animals and their habitats, writing and sharing. What a fantastic project! Well done everyone!!

Habitats - Hyrstmount Animation Project - Day 5

The children at Hyrstmount Junior School have had another fantastic day working on their Habitats Animation Project. This morning saw the creation of a second owl character and ten replacement owls were made in less than 20 minutes by a group of enthusiastic pupils. The remainder of the day was filled with animating, animating and more animating! As a result of this the animation phase is now complete and tomorrow sees a day of sound recording, music creation and narration. Yay!

Pupil diary extracts:
"Today was a fabulous day with the artists because me and Noor had so much fun filming and playing. It was fun!"

"Today I went with Paul and did some pictures and swapped the badgers and owls. I broke the flower [which was part of the set], Paul got his glue gun and fixed it. And then we watched the clip. It looked like the badger was on a skateboard!"

Habitats - Hyrstmount Animation Project - Day 4

It was the first animating day at Hyrstmount Junior School today and the children produced some lovely animation for their Habitats Film. The animation process often takes a long time and can get quite complicated when lots of characters are moving at different speeds, but the children were very focused and they grasped it quickly. In and amongst the animating the children finished off the final two characters - the Squirrel and the Red Deer, and by the end of the day they had even managed to animate a close up of each of these characters.

"Today was a marvelous day with the artists because we were filming the animals. We took pictures and swapped the animals. It is called animation." A pupil diary extract

Habitats - Hyrstmount Animation Project - Day Three

We have had an excellent day today at Hyrstmount Junior School. The children have been busy making backgrounds for their animation set, along with finishing off the cardboard characters that they started yesterday. For the backgrounds the children have designed intricately patterned fields, trees, hills and flowers which look fantastic.

First of all they designed their backgrounds on big sheets of card and used black berol pens to fill in the detail......

Then the children put a wash of water over their pen lines to create a lovely painterly effect.

In the afternoon we began to build the set and place the characters ready for the start of the animation tomorrow. The sets and the characters look wonderful!

At the end of the day the children wrote diary extracts, reflecting on their day. Here are some of their comments...

"Today I had a great time. We designed patterns for the fields and water washed them."

"Today I made a fabulous hill with spots and stripes on. It was amazing. I loved it and had a brilliant time!"

"I made some robins and wet them. Then with the pen I drew white posca lines around the robin. I also drew a badger and a tree."


"Today I went to the mobile classroom and I drew on the tree. It was so good!