Great excitement greeted me in the room this morning. Between last week and this week the children had invited family members to come along and pose for portraits. The whole room was cleared out and the couple of tables left inside were laden with lovely papers and drawing materials. We had guests of all ages including grannys, grandas, mummies, siblings from the school and an aunt who brought her 10-week old baby with her.

It was a little bit pressurised to start with -I think that the children felt a bit nervous about drawing people from outside the class but as the morning progressed they relaxed into it. There was more pressure if a particular child had invited someone into the session as they felt that they wanted to make a really strong piece of artwork about that person. The children decided if they wanted to do longer or shorter poses and helped to reassure their sitters and advise them on how to behave. At times there were 6 people posing simultaneously in different parts of the room. I encouraged the class to use the full range of available materials and we revisited some of the techniques and inspirations that we had been looking at over the weeks: scribbly lines, shading, close-ups, profile portraits. Mrs Wilson and Tanya were so attentive to visitors and children alike. They carefully filed away images between sheets of paper to keep them safe and distributed tea and coffee and biscuits to the guests and documented the whole morning.

For our final week the children would like to use the materials we have been working with plus pen and wash, paint and drawing with bread. Some of them are very keen to do self portraits and some might return to subjects that they have already done. There is time for them to take photos to work from if their subject isn’t available.

Leandra: “The more we did the more confident we got.”

Rachel: ” I wasn’t that sure before about drawing real life people but now I think that I can.”

Euan: “I didn’t think that anything was a challenge this week. It made you feel like a proper artist.”