What a privilege it has been to work alongside 4H and Mrs Housam. Together, we have looked at ‘Invisible Things’- our feelings and emotions. We have appreciated that we experience a variety of feelings and emotions and sometimes in quick succession. Questions such as ‘What do you love the most about yourself?’ ‘Who makes you feel loved?’ ‘How do you make other people feel loved?’ have made us pause, think and reflect.

Gratitude, vibes, worries, fears, having guts, getting the giggles, experiencing joy and having hope as well as being introduced to the ‘heebie jeebies’ are just some of the many feelings that we now recognise make up our unique weird and wonderful selves. We loved creating them in clay!

We built on our knowledge of clay from Year 3. Remembering how malleable, sticky and cold it is, how we could pinch, stretch, cut and roll it and how it keeps its form. Because it is sticky prior to drying out, it was difficult to remember the importance of cross hatching, applying slip and then joining the clay together with fingers or a tool when attaching clay to clay.

Once dry, we painted our clay sculptures using acrylic paint. Focus, dexterity and patience was required in abundance. The transformations were incredible.

During 4H’s time in the studio, they also painted two self-portraits. One was a study of themselves using watercolour, the other in acrylic created in the style of the illustrator Andy J Pizza.

It was important that we really looked at ourselves. Therefore on our iPads we took a selfie! We used this photograph for continued reference. Throughout we worked lightly. 4H discovered their eyes are halfway down their face, the ear starts around where their eyes are and finish in line with the nostrils. Lips end where the iris in the eye is. Eyebrows lead into the nose. We then added our hair.

Having grappled with the proportions we looked at the darker and lighter areas of our face and then moved onto cartridge paper. Prior to applying the watercolour, we looked carefully at our skin and hair tones- we discovered so many colours.We created our own swatch of colours that we needed to use.

We then applied watercolour to our self-portraits. We started lightly and worked in blocks of colour. The results are wonderful.

Now for the ‘cartoon’ like self-portraits. We placed a piece of white paper over our watercolour self-portrait, traced the shape of our face and then added the simplified mouth, nose and eyes all in the style of Andy J Pizza. We placed the simplified portrait over a piece of card and then traced over again but this time with a pen. A lot of pressure was applied in order to leave an imprint. With a pencil we went over the indentation.

Our ‘incredible feelings’ were then added in pencil. Using acrylics, we then painted. Finally, words/phrases from the lyrics of ‘Hounds of Love’ and feelings important to ourselves were then added.The results are inspired.

It was a privilege to share 4H’s creativity with parents and interested adults at Friday’s Art Celebration. There was song, dance, Kennings, an opportunity to walk the studio and appreciate the self-portraits and clay installation as well as create a ‘mini morph’.