Students impress famous artist with sweet project

Students at Witchford Village College impressed well-known artist Sarah Graham after teachers shared colourful images of their sweet project on social media.

Influenced by Sarah and her photorealism techniques, art teachers at the college set the new Year 7s a project to create their own colour drawing of a piece of Graham’s art.

Beginning with creating a baseline drawing assessment of a sweet of their choice, this was then followed by students carrying out their own research and creating a series of colour drawings.

Andrew Carruth, photography and art teacher, said: “Starting at a new school in what has been an extraordinary year hasn’t been an easy feat for our new Year 7 cohort, therefore we have been keen to provide them with exciting and challenging art lessons in order to drive their creativity.

“The art work created as part of this project has been fantastic and it’s been a joy to see the students so engaged and excited about refining their techniques.”

Once the students had completed the work, a montage image of all of the drawings was shared on the college’s social media pages, which was picked up by Sarah who praised the work of the group.

She said: “I thought the students’ observations and interpretations of my work were brilliant. I am very impressed and I hope that they are inspired to go on their own artistic adventures.”

Sarah Graham is a British painter who works in oil on canvas. Her paintings have been displayed in private collections worldwide and in 2012 was commissioned by the Kaiser Chiefs to paint the album cover for their singles collection ‘Souvenir’.

Mr Carruth added: “The fact that the artist who this project was influenced by noticed the students’ artwork created a real buzz in the classroom; we’re looking forward to progressing the drawings even further.”