By Sharon Gale, The Art Cabin

Student with her ant eater sculpture inspired by the Roald Dahl poem The Ant Eater — Student with her Anteater sculpture inspired by the Roald Dahl poem The Ant Eater

September 13th 2016 saw the celebration of 100 years since the birth of Roald Dahl, so I thought it would be a nice idea to create a project based around his poetry book ‘Dirty Beasts’ and a great opportunity to look at the illustrations by Quentin Blake.

Caption- Sharon Gale reading Dirty Beasts by Roald Dahl to her art club students — Sharon Gale reading Dirty Beasts by Roald Dahl to her art club students

The finished artwork would be a sculpture inspired by the ghastly beasts mentioned in the poems, positioned on a plinth decorated with marbled paper and mixed media.

This particular project incorporates observational drawing, illustration, modelling with Newplast, marbling inks and mixed media. It was carried out over seven, one hour sessions.

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Many thanks to Pink Pig International for the sketchbooks

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See Drawing Projects for Children for more Drawing Exercises

In 2016 AccessArt launched the Children’s Art Competition, supported by Cass Art. Amongst the categories for children we had one for teachers, to acknowledge all the hard work and dedication we know you put in to inspiring and enabling children.

Thank you to all the teachers who entered – you filled us full of enthusiasm and passion!

We’re very pleased to announce the winner: Jan Miller from Moreton Hall School in Oswestry. Congratulations Jan!

Jan impressed us with the sheer energy and range of her work with the children – we’re sure the snapshot of images below will give you a flavour of the work she submitted. We hope Jan will be collaborating with AccessArt very soon to create some resources for us, so watch this space!

Jan Miller – Talented Teacher Award

“I completed my degree in Illustration at Kingston University followed by a PGCE at UCL. I have almost 20 years experience of teaching Art, across the full primary and secondary age spectrum. My interests particularly lie in the students’ development of observational drawing and mixed media. I strongly believe in the use of personal sketchbooks at all levels. I expect the older students to have the same confidence and spontaneity as their younger counterparts. Similarly, I encourage the younger pupils to develop large work, over several sessions, alongside the older students. For several years I have been the Art Editor for SATIPS, a prep school magazine, to inspire Art teachers nationwide. I have recently developed Able, Gifted and Talented sessions for my own students and have extended this to a biannual event to other schools.”

When you work with children and young people it is important to have a child protection policy in place (and where appropriate you should ensure this extends to cover vulnerable adults).

You can find guidance from the Charity Commission here.

Download AccessArt’s Policy Document here. Please note that this is our working document – you may use this for reference only.