Royal High School Bath teacher and artist, Mrs Emma Joy, paid a special visit to St Stephen’s Primary Church School last week. Mrs Joy taught a pen and wash art workshop to the two Year 6 classes who learnt how to sketch forests which fitted in really well with their topic this term on the same subject. To get the children started, Mrs Joy discussed all the different techniques and processes for drawing landscapes and trees and showed the children examples of work by landscape artists such as John Constable, Van Gogh, Kathryn Maple and Hurvin Anderson.

They studied line drawing, tonality, impression, texture, and how to create a range of different marks to be descriptive with the drawing. The pupils then really enjoyed having a go at their own tree drawings making the most of the art supplies Mrs Joy had brought in including water based fine liner pens, good quality cartridge paper, and watercolour brushes. A valuable tip from Mrs Joy was to try and give an impression of what you see, rather than trying to draw every single leaf!

Mrs Joy also really encouraged the children to be brave and to embrace their mistakes. Fearlessness for life is very much an approach we take at Royal High School Bath and Mrs Joy’s advice to the St Stephen’s children was no different. She explained that it is necessary to be fearless in the context of art because: “Working in pen means that you can't rub out, so you need to be willing to adapt and modify your drawing as it develops. Adding 'wash' to the surface, to create more tonality and depth within the piece, this wash could be tinted with green tones, if they wanted to add colour, or just water, to create create a range of grey tones.”

Mrs Joy, an art teacher at Royal High School Bath who is also the mother of a Year 6 St Stephen’s pupil, said: “Thank you St Stephen’s Year 6 teachers and pupils for having me and being so wonderfully engaged and interested throughout the lesson. It has been wonderful both as a parent with a child at the School and as someone passionate about art to see how many children enjoyed this session and learnt some useful tips. Just looking around at everyone’s work, it was fantastic to see that every child achieved something by the end of the lesson.”

Commenting on Mrs Joy’s visit, Mrs Spicer-Downing, Year 6 teacher at St Stephen’s Primary Church School said: “I'd like to thank Mrs Joy, for coming in and spending time with our Year 6s. The children thoroughly enjoyed her workshop. It was especially nice to see the class all engaged, excited about art and sketching without worrying about making a 'mistake'. We rarely use pens to draw in this way, so thank you for donating them to our school. I have created a display to showcase the wonderful artwork for the children and their families to enjoy.”

Royal High School Bath has close links with St Stephen’s, not only are we just around the corner but many of our staff have children at the school and our students regularly volunteer here so we love working collaboratively with them in a number of ways. St Stephen’s already has a thriving art curriculum, we were really pleased to support this and hope the children benefited from today’s lesson. We wanted to give the school a small gift as a gesture of thanks for being so great to work with, and for being such lovely neighbours and hope they enjoy our small gift of art supplies.