From the 26^th to the 29^th of October, 5^th and 6^th form art students went to Tenby for a series of workshops and meetings with local artists. The trip was very work intensive and a great opportunity for the boys to broaden their coursework which will be a great help to their final GCSE and A level grades. It was an excellent chance to meet a series of artists and have their perspective on art and a taste of their techniques and ideas. In terms of the 6^th form the order of the trip went as follows:

On the first day the pupils arrived after a long journey and an early start and, although tired, went straight into a workshop with a local female artist named Andie Clay. Clay specialises in figurative landscapes working mostly with ink and chalk pastels. She gave the boys a very interesting insight into the way she worked, explaining the gestural way in which she produces her pieces. Clay believes that it is most important to work with your body and be as fluid and gestural as possible rather than to work with your mind and get bogged down in making everything perfect.

The boys had the chance to do some quick sketches on the beach as well as experimenting with different mark making techniques and producing some interesting pieces with ink and chalk and charcoal. After their evening meal the students had a night-time workshop with Eva Bartussek, a German professional photographer who comes very highly praised and currently works with an engineering company in Germany attempting to make their achievements more interesting and well known to the public. She taught the boys an immensely fun technique known as “light graffiti” which uses a very long shutter speed in order to make pictures with a torch in the dark. The camera picks up the movement of the torch allowing the artist to make patterns and draw pictures in the air with light, similar to a sparkler but captured on film. The boys had great fun creating different pictures and using the light to draw on themselves and others, producing some really interesting and exciting images.

The second day began with a photography session with Chris Tancock, a landscape photographer who tries to create exciting and unusual imagery without editing. Chris takes pictures during thunderstorms and periods of sunrise or sunset when the sky becomes an unnatural colour, challenging the normal views of nature. The boys walked up and down the beach with Chris experimenting with making natural compositions (using objects around you as backdrops or boarders for the focus of the image) as well as looking at perspective and movement within photographs. Chris’s idea was that photographs lie to you as they only show you one viewpoint or perspective and you can use this to create some images that, to the human eye, would be impossible. The next workshop was with Mike Davies, a blacksmith turned sculpture who works with copper and iron. The boys forged their own copper leaves as well as having a talk with Mike about the inspiration for his work. The boys then visited Tenby museum to see some interesting ceramics by Natalia Dias which look at the idea of birth and mortality and are nearly all ceramic casts of cow’s hearts and tongues. That night the 6^th form had a life drawing workshop led by Clare Ferguson Walker whose husband acted as the model. For many of the boys this was their first attempt at life drawing but all performed very well and produced some really good pieces of work.

On Thursday the boys spent most of the day with Raul Speek, a very interesting Cuban painter who works mostly in interesting and often surrealist portraiture. Raul taught the boys his outlook on how to draw the human face and figure and set them the task of drawing each other in a figurative and stylised fashion. The boys then did some abstract landscape painting experimenting with different blending of colours. After this the boys worked with Ivan Black with whom they made wire sculptures. The students split into pairs and each pair made a different section of the body, eventually producing a large wire figure. The 5^th form had already produced several sculptures and as the theme had been set as warriors (a ninja, a Spartan and a sumo wrestler were the first three sculptures) the 6^th formers decided to make a female Viking warrior in order to be a little different. The session that night took the form of a music session with Raul Speek who is a very keen musician and taught them about several traditional Cuban instruments and encouraged them to take part in a jam session with him.

The final day was perhaps the most work intensive, as all the boys had to create a wood carving with Robert Jakes, a very talented wood carver whose sculptures can be find throughout the country as well as in France and even the U.S. The lower sixth each worked on creating part of a sign which will hopefully go outside the art department which reads “Art & Design”. Each boy had created a design that was in same way connected with the school and worked on a separate block which would then be put together to assemble the sign. The upper sixth created pieces of their own which they had designed previously. Robert Jakes was very helpful and kind in explaining the different techniques of wood carving and the day was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone.

Overall the trip was a great success and all the boys thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Everyone who attended would like to thank the staff for organising the trip so well and making it such an enjoyable experience as well as those artists who ran the workshops who gave the boys such a valuable resource for their coursework.