The art department were delighted to invite the artist John Denaro in to run 2 days of workshops this term. ?John Denaro?is a local artist who works in pastels to create large scale portraits.

On the first day a group of our talented artists from years 9 to 13 were invited to take part in an Olympic themed?workshop. John Denaro gave a talk about his work to the students and demonstrated the processes of getting facial features in proportion and using pastels to create form and detail.?During the day the pupils created portraits of famous Olympic athletes. Some of the A-level students worked on coloured pastel pieces for their coursework, they were able to continue with these during the second day when other sixth from students learned how to create portraits in greyscale using pastels and charcoal. The students enjoyed the workshop and the opportunity to work on a larger scale, with work being produced up to 2 metres tall.

All the students really enjoyed the day and the work was amazing. John Denaro said that the students had worked very hard and he had really enjoyed his visit, we hope we will be able to run more workshops with him in the future.

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?It was a good experience because his demonstrations and step by step instructions helped me to progress with my skills and gave me the confidence to work on such a large scale.??Heloise (Year 13)

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?The whole group were able to produce a refined piece in only a day, which would have not been possible without the help of John Denaro.? Tom (Year 11)

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?I really enjoyed the day, it was great to work on a larger scale and in pastels which I hadn?t used before.? Bradley (Year 9)

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Verity Bartram