I took my bags of mystery objects over to Bayswater this week, for three days of drawing workshops at Hallfield Primary School – an Arts Council funded project organised by LONSAS (London Schools Arts Service). I was working with Year 2 and Year 4, teaching different drawing techniques. I was there on World Book Day and had a room full of Snow Whites and Spidermen! This also gave me the chance to try out the book I’ve illustrated, Duck Sock Hop by Jane Kohuth (out in May) – and they loved it and laughed on every page…and then asked for my autograph! Great fun.

The objects in bags were popular – it was lovely to see the children listening for the sea with the shells and really looking at the detail. Some of the drawings they produced while looking at the object not the paper were fabulous, and so well observed.

It was a great school to work in and I am hoping to do more with them in the future. It’s also a fabulous listed building by Denys Lasdun – you can find out more about the buildings here – apparently the whole site is based on flower petals, and all the corridors are marvellously curved.

I’ve been at Grand Avenue Primary School in Surbiton working with year 5 teaching them drawing skills. Each child had a bag with an object in, and they then had to draw it four ways, then swap and draw another object four different ways. There were wails of dismay at the idea of using the ‘wrong’ hand and not taking hands off the paper, but some excellent results. This was followed by a mixture of drawing and collage based on reference pics of old buildings, and a session drawing portraits.

I’ve just finished a big mural project at St Paul’s C of E Primary School in Hook, near Chessington.

The project began with three days working with the whole school, class by class, creating colurful birds, leaves, flowers and buildings using a variety of media from acrylic to collage and coloured pencil.

Year 2 created some amazing collage vehicles, while Year 3 drew their own homes with great detail and a dash of imagination:

Other year groups experimented with colour mixing to create dozens of different shades for bricks and leaves, year 4 drew beautiful birds and year 6 worked in groups to make large collage/drawings of key buildings in or connected to the area, including Southwark Cathedral as a focal point.

I painted their drawings onto the boards and collaged on the cut out bricks, then added all the richness of bird and plant life, as well as the homes and vehicles that the children created (including an unfeasibly large number of tanks!).

It’s the third time I’ve worked at St Paul’s and it was lovely to recognise so many children and to see how their creative work has developed over the years.

In July I spent some time at Bainbridge Studios screen printing a limited edition poster of all the beautiful drawings done by Year 6 at Cannon Barnett Primary School, Whitechapel. The drawings were done during workshops I did with the class in May exploring their local built environment for the English Heritage pilot project, Special Places. The class also chose a building they wanted to list and presented their ideas to a team from Tower Hamlets planning department, and visited a live conservation project at Altab Ali park with Ben Pearce from High Street 2012. The project came to a conclusion on July 14th with a visit to the school from Baroness Andrew, the chair of English Heritage, who presented all the children in the class with their screen printed posters, and in return, they presented her with one of the posters which she has promised to frame and display in her office,

Year 6 were a fantastic class to work with, as were teachers Peter and Laurens,  and I thoroughly enjoyed the project. Both English Heritage and Tower Hamlets are hoping to repeat the project in other schools in the future.

This is the artwork for the giant poster I have been screenprinting for the English Heritage project ‘Special Places’, which I worked on during May with Canon Barnett Primary School in Whitechapel. The Year 6 class did some really wonderful drawings of the built environment around the school following some exploratory walks with cameras, and I have put all their work together into one image. I pushed them to add lots of detail with different weights of pen and I think the results are impressive. I particularly like the chimney on the Truman Brewery, the lovely patchwork of the gherkin and the way the school itself (second from the bottom on the left hand side) looks like a fairytale castle.

They were a fabulous class to work with – each child will now get their own poster to take home.

I’ve just finished a two week project in Whitechapel for English Heritage, with Year 6 at Canon Barnett Primary School.

Equipped with sketchbooks, the class have been walking and drawing the built heritage of the area, as well as making collages, seeing behind the scenes at the renovations at Altab Ali park, and making a presentation to professionals from English Heritage and Tower Hamlets council about which local features they would like to see listed. We also visited the Ian Berry photography exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery, which is practically next door to the school.

It’s been a very enjoyable project and the next step is for me to design then screen print a poster with the children’s drawings, which we will present to the chair of English Heritage in July. Looking forward to going back already.

I’ve just started a series of family learning workshops at Ham House – we will be creating a permanent timeline exhibit to celebrate the house’s 400th anniversary. For the first session I made badges for everyone, randomly allocating them a character from the house’s fascinating history.

I’ve been doing a series of education workshops at The Mall Galleries with different visiting schools from Lambeth. The children get to talk about paintings, choose a character from a piece of work in the current exhibition, then make their own book featuring doors into other worlds. The children have been so enthusiastic, it’s been great working there.

I’ve been designing family activities for visitors to Osterley House. There are six different activities altogether: for this one I designed a set of rubber stamps inspired by the Robert Adam architecture, and visitors will be able to mix them up to design their own buildings.

I’ve spent the last week working at St Paul’s C of E primary school, Hook, creating two large textile collage panels to celebrate the school’s 150th anniversary. The red words are the school’s values. Everyone from year 1 up to year 6 took part, and I completed the work by building two wooden frames and stretching the fabric over them for a neat finish.