I’ve just completed a community art project at Canons House, Mitcham, which was a pleasure from start to finish. Back in November I ran workshops at this historic house with two schools, as well as drop-in sessions for families and adults after work. Here are the completed banners, hung this week… keep scrolling down and I will show you how they were made!

The workshops began with mixing colour and creating painted sheets of colour to use for collage later, using classic ready-mix school paints… I had forgotten how good these paints are for the money, just £2.99 for a huge bottle that lasts forever (which is making me re-think how I use paints for my illustration work). We also went out into the 18th century walled garden to look at the colour and texture of bricks for inspiration:

While the paint dried, everyone made drawings of characters who might have visited the house over the centuries. I brought Robert Selbie’s ‘The Anatomy of Costume’, illustrated by Victor Ambrus, for inspiration and reference which led to some excellent characters.

Next step was to make collages of plants from the materials made earlier – one of the evening participants actually runs a lavender farm, so she made a stunningly accurate botanical sample. I also finally got the chance to meet Syvebonne from Little Ark. During lockdown I joined her project to make masks, caps and bags for NHS workers, but we never met in person until now and it was a real treat! My mum joined in the sewing project too and was much more productive than me – here’s me, Syvebonne and one of the bags my mum made that Syvebonne kept as an example of best practice.

Finally I took everything home and did LOTS of scanning, then put all the artwork together in two massive Photoshop files, moving the layers until I had the right design. For a finishing touch, I made a collage of the house itself – and I am sneaking it into the picture book I am working on at the moment as part of the scenery! I got the artwork printed onto canvas by Bannerbuzz, who did a good job and delivered the artwork amazingly quickly considering that they were posting it all the way from Mumbai.

I’m looking forward to doing more work at Canons House this year – thankyou Amy!

I’ve been back working with children on the ward and in the classroom at Evelina Children’s Hospital School. Together we made another big book, using collage and drawing, this time on a theme of London Landmarks. As always the children inspired me with their vision of an exuberant, colourful London, with a diverse crowd visiting the British Museum (top centre) and the royal barge Gloriana tackling some impressive waves.

This week Sue Edkins and I have been at St Stephen’s Primary School, East Twickenham, running workshops with Year 4 and Year 5.

It’s all part of our WW1 themed community art project, which will go on display in Diamond Jubilee Gardens, Twickenham, in June this year.

The workshops have been great fun, with delightfully enthusiastic children and teachers. Activities divided into 3, with each child getting a chance to try them all – logistically complicated but feasible! The first was drawing, using wartime reference photographs; the second was painting – experimenting with mixing colours within a specified palette – we had some delicious ochres, mustards and khaki shades emerging simply from three primary colours and white. The final activity was monoprinting, which became strangely addictive: once shown the technique, children were given a variety of tools to experiment with mark-making, and they were very inventive in their approach. They were also intrigued by the huge tube of water-based block printing ink (the squirty stuff) and seemed to like the smell!

Each class was making work related to a particular theme: the Belgian refugee community in East Twickenham, Twickenham’s sporting heroes at the Front; and Richmond Park during the war – all fascinating topics on which we were able to share our research from earlier in the year.

We have two workshops still to do, and after that will spend some weeks collaging together all the work we have collected to make three finished images.

Many thanks to Ruby, Anna and Tinah for their help.