Alkborough Primary's Popping Portraits

This Wednesday found 20-21 Visual Arts Centre plunged into darkness as our power lines went down. A minor panic ensued as we realised we had 20 year one and two pupils on their way from Alkborough Primary School for a full day workshop.

As flexible and spontaneous as we boast to be, this one had us thinking on our toes and we decided to run the workshop back at the school, to make sure we could operate safely and the children would still get maximum experience.

So... back on the bus and back to the school we went, so we could learn about Andy Warhol and make our very own Popping Portraits of ourselves and classmates, just like Burton Primary a few months ago.

Children got to learn the proportions on drawing portraits and made some fabulous pictures of their classmates. We used these portraits to make stencils and cut holes for transferring ink through during the screen printing stage.

The class got to use our specialist printing equipment, just like what Andy Warhol would have used in the 60's. This was very exciting and made some really interesting results.

Because of the rush, Education at 20-21 unfortunately didn't manage to get any photographs of the fun we had, but we did get some lovely feedback from the children:

"It was fantastic because we lent thins abowt portets."
"I loved it so much."
"I really liked the trip because it was at school"


For further details on our Popping Portraits workshop and other offers from Education, get in touch with our Education Officer: 01724 297070 or education.2021@northlincs.gov.uk or take a look at our Education Offer page on this blog.

Burton Primary become Andy Warhol!

Sometimes we get some really interesting requests for workshops, here at 20-21; so when Burton Primary School called with a request for a POP ART themed workshop based around Andy Warhol, we were really excited!

Andy Warhol is one of the most famous artists in the world, whose work continues to inspire creatives, today. His work is instantly recognisable and infiltrates the world of art, fashion and music. Some of the most iconic images and portraits in art were created by Andy Warhol. We used some of these images in our workshop with Burton Primary, last week:


Many of the children already knew who this lady was because of their studies of America, back in school. We spoke about how often we see this sort of portrait of Marilyn Monroe and how famous it is.

Some children thought this was Harry Potter, then insisted it was Daniel Radcliffe!
Our Education Officer explained who this man is and why Warhol may have made this portrait of John Lennon, given his fame at the time.
We spoke about the colours and lines in this picture.

This photo has been brought to people's attention recently, because of a lawsuit between Apple and the band The Velvet Underground. We spoke about how this image is easily recognised as Andy Warhol's work, even if it didn't say his name at the bottom.

It is said that Warhol was a sickly child, whose mother believed that soup would help make him better. The artist became known for recreating these soup can pictures, which soon became one of the most famous images of the pop-art movement.
We spoke about repetition and popular culture when looking at this picture.

Andy Warhol's artwork became so sought after and in high demand, that he opened an art studio called "The Factory", in which he employed many people to create some of the artworks for him. Warhol would surround himself with famous icons and celebrities, whom he would become obsessed with and recreate their images over and over again. He believed that by recreating someone's portrait repeatedly, he was helping to keep them alive, even after they whad died.
We focused themes of repetition, popular culture, colour, line and portraits throughout our Burton Primary workshop, last week. Ensuring that children understood what Warhol's aims were with over saturating the market with repetitive images and iconography.

In an attempt to replicate The Factory, we chose a wall to be our inspiration wall, and filled it with blu-tak. Children were given 20 seconds to draw something they associated with American popular culture and stick it on the wall. Then they were given 20 seconds to write a word they associated with Andy Warhol and stick it to the wall. 20 seconds more and the children had to draw something they associated with pop-art and stick it on the wall. We quickly filled our inspiration wall with all the things we talked about during the morning:

We told the pupils that Andy Warhol coined the term "super star" and that he thought everyone in the world would have their 15 minutes of fame.

Using some of the terminology we learned during the morning, we went to look at an exhibition in 20-21 Visual Arts Centre. Jason Carlisle's portraits, hold similar themes to Andy Warhol's work; repetition, line, colour and portraits.

Children were asked to fill in a worksheet to remind us of the similarities and to get them thinking about the artwork, critically:

Worksheets to one side, we began making our pop-art inspired creations. The pupils measured out four 10cms by 10cms squares and swapped with people around their table to make sure everyone had lots of different colours to stick down:

The artwork was left to dry. After a well earned lunch break, we all sat and carefully drew a picture of the person to our left. The pupils turned out to be excellent observers and very creative at drawing!

The pictures were photocopied and features were cut to create simple jigsaw type portraits of our fellow artists. These jigsaws were used as stencils for screen printing our portriats! The colours we used were so bright and vibrant, we all had to wear sunglasses to look at them!!

It was such a delight to work with Burton Primary School and especially to deliver such an interesting topic! A big thank you to all our helpers and teachers on the day, who made sure everything ran smoothly! A bigger thank you to the Burton Primary pupils who were excellent artists in our Factory on the day!