On Wednesday 20 January, as part of their art course, the Year 8 pupils visited the Natural History Museum at Tring.  Hannah, from the Education Department at the museum scoured the collection for insects which would be suitable to draw from.  She found lots of wonderful creatures in the archive, some sets of butterflies and beetles in small cases and some in resin blocks, perfect for looking closely at. The year 8s were focusing on bugs as they will inspire this term’s art nouveau project! 

​After a brief introduction from Hannah, Miss Sender led a drawing session, with each student aiming to fill a consortia book with a variety of drawings from life, looking closely at the specimens, which were hundreds of years old, and recording what we saw.  Using pencils and pens pupils recorded detail and pattern, Kishor said; “We drew the outlines of the bugs, then the patterns they had on them (some beautiful some not so beautiful), before drawing them in absolute detail.”

At the same time Miss Hayes ran a photography workshop with individual pupils, each having the opportunity to use the ‘mini studio’ pod to take some ‘macro’ images of the insects.  Everyone worked really hard doing the drawings and taking great photos, which will really inspire their upcoming lessons. In the afternoon there was an opportunity to explore the 4,000 animal specimens collected by Walter Rothschild which are on permanent display.

Isabelle said: “I really enjoyed this trip and I have learned much more about sketching animals and paying much more attention to small details which make the animal what it is. This was a really interesting and fun outing!”