artists of the week!

The Art department report that this has been an outstanding week for work from Year 9, and that selecting students as Artists of the Week has been challenging as there has been so much exceptional work to choose from.

As a result, they have been unable to narrow it down to just two students from the wealth of talent on show and the hard work in evidence, so have this week nominated an awe-inspiring 6 Artists of the Week!

First up, are Isabel, Chinyelu and Violet, who have been working on Inspirational People Pencil drawings: Head of Department Mrs Nanvadazeh explains the course requirements:

Initially, students have been learning about proportion in portraiture, referring to the relationship in size and placement between one object and another.

When creating realistic portraits, it is important to get the facial proportions correct, so that their work is very exposed to this in being right or wrong. There is a formula for positioning facial features that students have been both learning and exploring through their inspirational people pencil drawings, that is in evidence in the fantastic work that we see here.

Next, we are delighted to celebrate the work of Siya, George and Madeleine, who have produced these amazing and carefully crafted Chuck Close-inspired self-portraits, and Mrs Nanvadazeh talks us through the course content:

Concluding their portrait project, students researched the work of Chuck Close and created an inspired self-portrait. Chuck Close was globally renowned for reinvigorating the art of portrait painting from the late 1960s to the present day, an era when photography had been challenging painting's former dominance in this area, and succeeding in steadily gaining critical appreciation as an artistic medium in its own right. Close emerged from the 1970s painting movement of Photorealism, also known as Super-Realism, but then moved well beyond its initially hyper-attentive rendering of a given subject to explore how methodical, system-driven portrait painting based on photography's underlying processes (over its superficial visual appearances) could suggest a wide range of artistic and philosophical concepts. In addition, Close's personal struggles with dyslexia, and subsequent partial paralysis, have suggested real-life parallels to his professional discipline, as though his methodical and yet also quite intuitive methods of painting are inseparable from his own daily reckoning with the body's own vulnerable, material condition. 

Through the use of a grid system, Close creates paintings that are composed of many squares. Like an illusion, when viewing one of these paintings close up, one sees an array of squares filled with abstract shapes and colours. Upon further observation, and when viewed from a distance, a portrait appears that is formed by these separate square compositions. Close’s mathematical approach to structuring his work, combined with his abstract flair, results in energetic portraits. This lesson — which is inspired by the different elements of Close’s portraits — reinforces the elements of shape, colour, and value in creating unique self-portraits. 

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Really well done, we are super proud of you all, and watch this space for updates on next week's awesome UGS Artists!

For rolling up to date information on the work of our talented students, follow the Department on: 

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