Why these artworks brought us to tears

Yes, it goes without saying we are always proud of the achievements of our students in our lessons, but this project brought us to tears.  As we stood back and took in what they created we could blindly match the students with their work. Each one is developing their own style and making their own artistic choices and funnily enough each face in away reflected a self-image of themselves.

Inspired by Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits we led this project over two weeks.Using a combination of taught techniques such as grid drawing and using graded pencils and chalk and at the same time offering the students the opportunity to inject their own creativity and style into their work.

No one said making art is easy and if you have ever sat down to attempt a portrait like this you will know that it is no walk in the park. Many of our students just would not have attempted this artwork on their own and this magnified the huge sense of pride and achievement they had when they left the second session with their finished pieces. 

Here are our top 5 tips and techniques to help your children succeed when taking on a project like this. ‍

Start drawing onto a mid-tone – we love grey and brown paper as it helps the young artists to understand what we mean by highlights and shadows - they add these in and voilà

Paint with colours that work together - tried and tested colour pallets set for success

Using acrylic paint is one of the most adaptable ways of painting. They can hairdryer their work to speed up the painting to keep them engaged or alternatively wipe off areas that aren't working, this taking the pressure off the artists.

Collage is an adaptable way of adding personal details and meaning to their work. we encourage our artists to place their paper cut outs down and rearrange them many ways before committing to their design

Studying real people.  We looked at tonnes of Frida self-portraits, developing their visual language, but it was always in context of who Frida was, looking at how she looked through photographs and what her life was like.  All art comes from people and we believe learning how artists use art to express their voices is empowering and engaging - As Romare Beardon said, “art is the soul of a people”