6 February 2026
It’s been a busy start to the year in the Art Department, with a variety of workshops helping students from Year 7 to Sixth Form develop and broaden their stills.
Year 9 - photography
As part of the Year 9 Landscapes Project, students took part in a hands-on photography workshop focused on developing both technical and creative skills. The girls were taught key photographic fundamentals, including aperture, shutter speed and lighting, alongside core compositional rules such as framing, leading lines and the rule of thirds.
Working outdoors, students explored the local landscape, experimenting with different focal lengths and viewpoints to capture texture, form and natural light. The workshop encouraged them to observe their surroundings carefully and to think critically about how technical choices can shape mood and meaning within an image.
The photographs produced during the workshop will feed directly into students’ printmaking and ceramic work, allowing them to translate photographic imagery into tactile, three-dimensional forms. We look forward to displaying this exciting body of work in our Summer Exhibition.
Lower Sixth - portraiture
Alumna Evie, now in her third year of Fine Art at Newcastle University, returned to our studios to lead a portraiture workshop for Lower Sixth students.
The first session focused on the expressive mood and abstraction of Frank Auerbach, with students creating large-scale charcoal drawings that explored structure, tone and emotional intensity. The second session shifted to paint, drawing inspiration from the gestural brush marks of Euan Uglow and Lucian Freud. Students were encouraged to build form through confident mark-making and to break away from over-precious approaches to their work.
We are very grateful to Evie for sharing her experience and expertise with the next generation of artists. The students responded with enthusiasm and focus, producing mature, ambitious outcomes that demonstrated both technical confidence and creative risk-taking.
Year 10 - portraiture
During the first part of their portraiture workshop, led by our artist in residence Eilise Lancaster, students were given a lesson on the anatomy of the face, followed by a demonstration of how this underlying structure creates planes, which have an important role in creating the light and shadow shapes we see within our features.
Inspired by the pencil and chalk portrait drawings of John Poynter and François Boucher, students were taught how to construct a portrait based on these abstract light and dark shapes. They were then shown how to shade with different types of pencil, and where to add chalk, to effectively render the form and likeness of a sitter. The results were impressive.
Year 7 – still life
Eilise guided Year 7 through the process of creating small still life oil paintings in their recent workshop. Students explored cool and warm colours, colour mixing, how to plan your composition and paint application technique. The girls are researching artists who paint interior space for their Marden Diploma Enquiry Project and the workshop will support them in creating their own response to the artists they choose to explore.
The girls were very enthusiastic about the session:
Millie W Painting a still life helped give us an artistic view about the objects around us. This was one of my favourite workshops because we got a real chance to create a big and technical piece of work.
Katherine H I really enjoyed experiencing a different style of art and developing techniques I can use. I learnt that you can use angles to get your precise shape instead of just drawing a circle.
Katherine C I had a great time at the art workshop as I have never used oil paint before and learnt how to blend paint - it was so much fun.
Rita B I was surprised how much the type of brush you use can impact the shading\tone appearance on the canvas. The challenge for me was to create fine details and precision. I learnt about blending colours, which will help me refine my skills and approach in future projects.
Allegra H. The demonstrations were wonderful as our teacher was all open for queries and is sensational at art. Smiles and sketchbooks were shared all round.