BY MC B (YEAR 10)

On Thursday 24 February Year 10 Art students took a trip to London to gather resources and information for our ‘Structures’ project. We were dropped off near Trafalgar Square and walked to the National Gallery, entering via the Sainsbury Wing.

The first exhibition we visited was ‘Albrecht Durer: Travels of a Renaissance Artist’. His artwork consisted of portraits of people and sketches of landscapes, religious scenes and interiors. A highlight of the exhibition was an engraving called ‘Adam and Eve’. My favourite artworks were  ‘Head of a Sleeping Child’ and ‘Saint Jerome’. I really liked the way that he used intricate mark-making to create tone and form in his artwork.

While we were in the exhibition we took photos of our favourite pieces as well as making sketches. I sketched the ‘Head of a Sleeping Child’ in brown pencil on grey paper, which I was pleased with.

After that we went to the Kehinde Wiley exhibition which contained a number of large vibrant paintings. He is a contemporary African-American artist best known for portraits that feature African Americans in the traditional settings of Old Master paintings. At the end of the exhibition there was a room with a video installation playing. It included figures roaming in a barren snowy landscape, which I found very interesting.

After we left the exhibitions we ate lunch in Trafalgar Square and made sketches of the buildings around us, including the famous lions. I sketched a spire of the top of a building in pencil on brown paper.

Then we walked across Jubilee Bridge to the Embankment so that we could take photos and sketches of the skate park and other architectural features. I sketched some of the very tall buildings in biro on grey paper. Afterwards, we walked to Westminster and on to Buckingham Palace.

A mini task on the day was to take photos of our ‘Lego figure’ in different settings on our walking tour, which was fun! We took lots of photos of buildings on our walking tour and made further sketches for our project. We were then picked up by the school minibus and headed home to school.