Because You're St. Georgeous

"We need your help with some art projects," said the Art Coordinator of St. George's Primary School in Littleover. "And one of them has to be done before Easter!"
I'm not one to shy from a challenge, and I did have one free day before Easter, so I took a trip to the school.

They wanted the children to produce a piece to present to the local St. George's Church, as a token of their thanks and appreciation for everything that the church has done for them over the years. Something relevant, permanent, and classy. We tossed some ideas around before deciding on a stained glass window-style relief piece, based on the myth of St. George, and involving children from Reception to Y6.

So I returned home, sat down, had a cuppa and a ponder, and came up with this design:

Everyone happy with the design, I headed to the school on the last day of term. The children were excitable, but all lovely and interested in what I was doing there, what materials I was using, and who would get to have a go.

I worked with just two children from each class, and 24 in total. They built up the many layers, from the basic background to the detailed face, by applying small balls of art mache, shaping it, and smoothing it out.

The bell rang for the end of the day, the children rushed home to their Easter eggs and XBoxes, and I spent a couple of minutes smoothing the edges and refining the details.

I'm returning after Easter to help the kids paint it. Can't wait.

I'm Loving Angels In...Crewe

A couple of weeks ago I went to Springfield Special School in Crewe to help some of the Juniors make some giant angels for their Christmas performances.
Here were the plans:

With my two wonderfully helpful helpers, we split the group in two and had them each work on a different angel. The children did all of the design work, then painted their designs onto large pieces of cloth.

They were happy painting away which left us to dish out paint and clean up the mess they made!

After a hard day's work the children went home and I attached the painted sheets to the pre-made frames, and popped a light inside each one to give them an ethereal glow.

Result: two big, colourful angels for Springfield School.

Life in plastic, it's fantastic!

Finished on the 16th October, this project at Southfields Community Primary School in Coventry was our first foray into the complex and remarkable world of plastic casting.To show the kids the dangerous chemicals that we'd be using to cast their mini masterpieces we set up our lab outside.

Then we went into each class (R, Y1, Y2) and did some relief work and random Matisee-inspired-shape-cutting-out to produce the inserts that would go inside each of the 140 resin blocks.

With all of the inserts completed, and a design for a giant WELCOME to be embedded into the

blocks approved by head teacher Paul, the Big Art People holed up in the lab for the next few days to work their alchemical wonders.

The blocks were left to set, then placed in the ground and put to bed over the weekend whilst the

adhesive beneath them and the varnish on top of them, cured.

And here are the results (shown with the original plan)!

They're so shiny that it's difficult to do them justice in a photo. You'll just have to trust that they look brilliant when viewed with the naked eye!

Seven Summer Hats for a School in Slough

So much for a relaxing end of term! We spent the last week before the summer holidays at Marish Primary School in Slough, making headdresses with (almost) all of its 640 children.

Each year group needed something different to wear for the procession at their annual Dance Festival (called Let's Dance), so we put our heads together and came up with 7 designs for 7 workshops: Reception made some colourful Rainbows; Y1 a night sky with a big yellow Moon; Y2 made feathers for their Air themed hats; Y3 did some brilliant, tall Fire headdresses; Y4 made long, sharp blades of grass to represent Earth; Y5 echoed their Water theme with wispy strips of shiny film; and Y6 made some impressive firey Suns.

Getting through all of the classes in just 5 days was certainly a challenge! But we got it done, and the results of the project are brilliant. We've been promised some photos from the event, so I'll pop those up as soon as they arrive.

Many thanks to Lucy for helping us out on the Monday when I couldn't be there. You did us proud! Does that mean that you're officially the Third Big Art Person though? We'll have to wait and see...

It's muraltastic!

Whitefriars Infant School in Northamptonshire needed their playground wall brightening up... so who did they call? The Big Art People of course.
We were asked to do a big bright mural along a minibeasts theme, so first we got the children to produce some designs, then took an element from each one to produce this mockup of the final piece:


Everyone was happy with the design so we packed up our paints and headed down to the school. We passed two very windy days painstakingly transferring the children's wonderful minibeasts onto the wall:


Everyone was really pleased with the final piece. It certainly brightens up the playground! And it's all the children's work.
Hopefully we'll be back at Whitefriars next school year to do another giant art project on the front of the school. Any ideas?!

Jim (Big Artist)