Art Department

Art Clubs 2015-16

This year’s three Art Clubs have been organised slightly differently, to accommodate girls from each Middle School year group. Some keen girls have, therefore, been able to attend more than one club each week to extend their creative skills. Watercolour Club has been a new initiative, run by Mrs Crowther on Tuesday lunchtimes, with the invaluable help of Nuala Fowler, the department’s talented Art Prefect. The tasks have enabled girls to learn a variety of technical and creative skills using stage by stage photographs and videos. As always, part of the Autumn term was dedicated to the Christmas card competition. The standard of entries was very high and the winner, whose painting of a tree with robins in a snowstorm was chosen to be the design on the School Charity Christmas card, was Manahil Masood from 7C. In addition to this, during the Autumn term, a group of 20 enthusiastic Middle School girls, under Mrs Fisher’s guidance, designed and created some fabulous, colourful ceramic fish. In the Spring term, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day were the inspiration for some beautiful ceramic hearts. Thoughts of sunshine in the Summer term have inspired designs for ceramic suns, which will be gleaming and shining with bright glazes as the holidays approach. Drawing Club on Wednesday lunchtimes, run by Miss Fazackerley, has been the third new club this year. The varied themes during the year have allowed the budding artists to develop new representational drawing skills in a range of media. Themes have included Draw Yourself! Christmas Snowflake, Animal Magic and the girls’ Own Choice, including hands, eyes, costume design and still life. Year 13 pupil, Nuala Fowler, has had her artwork featured on the front cover of the 2016 Specialist Crafts catalogue. She has also received a voucher for £100 to spend on art supplies as a reward. “I was really excited and quite shocked when I heard my design had been chosen.” Nuala said. “The painting was part of my AS-Level. I’d seen quite a few painters who did city scenes and I was inspired by that, particularly rainy scenes. I went around Manchester at night, visiting my favourite places, and took photos. I tried to capture the movement of the cars to get the movement of the city. One of the artists I was inspired by was Michael John Ashcroft, who does city scenes in Manchester.” This follows the Girls’ Division Art Department submitting pupils’ work to the Specialist Crafts Art Gallery for consideration in the 2016 Cover Competition. In addition to Nuala’s piece winning the coveted spot on the cover, work by a number of other pupils was also featured in the catalogue: Year 12 pupils Coris Craggs and Jessica Broome, Year 13 pupils Laura Hainey and Iman Orths, and recent leavers Emma Jackson and Robyn Lomas. The School received a £275 voucher in addition to this.

Specialist Crafts were really impressed by the high standard of all the work by Girls’ Division pupils and offered their congratulations to everyone featured in the catalogue. Year 13 student, Laura Hainey, has also submitted her work to the Specialist Crafts Catalogue Cover Competition. Her work ‘Untitled’ was selected as one of the featured works in the September edition, and as a prize for being shortlisted, she won a £75 voucher. The judges were very impressed by the high standard of work submitted to the competition, and will have a hard job ahead selecting the overall winner.

Nuala with her winning artwork

GCSE Work

Zoe Ashworth, Year 11

Olivia Swarbrick, Year 11

Niamh Knowles, Year 10 Eleanor Shaw, Year 11

Olivia Smith, Year 11

Kiran Cheema, Year 11

Isabel harper, Year 10 Hester Grange, Year 11 Sophie Brown, Year 10

Molly Marshall, Year 11 Ruby Browne, Year 10

Lauren Crowther, Year 11

Khadijjah Ali, Year 10 Jessie Harper, Year 11

Hannah Robinson, Year 11

A level Work

Penny Booth, Year 12

Lauren Hurst, Year 12 Nuala Fowler, Year 13

Jessie Sou, Year 12 Libby Lupton, Year 12

Megan Preedy, Year 12