See You Outside

A Magical Day In Buck Wood

Thursday 8th May saw our group of 11 young people from Salt Grammar School making their first trip to Buck Wood in Thackley with Angie and Viv, along with Arts Project Officer Mrs Graham, and Dr Alvin, a local historian and Chair of the 'Friends of Buck Wood'.

Buck Wood is a wonderful green space with a very interesting past, and on Thursday, the fabulous warm sunny weather turned it into a magical outdoor art classroom.  There will be more information about Buck Wood's history in a later post and plenty more pictures of the artwork we made.  In the meantime, here are some photos that hopefully capture the spirit of our day outside.

The Edge of the Water

Dry stone walls and wooden fences are a feature of Ogden Reservoir.  We have enjoyed seeing the blue and grey water peeking over the top of a stone wall or through the slats of a wooden fence.  The water looks especially beautiful when the sun glitters and gleams on the dark surface.

Lukman has captured the rough wooden planks of the fence in this painting.

Nadia had never used a quill pen before but she has made a good drawing of the old stone wall and the trees across the water.

More Ogden Artwork from Brackenhill Children

The Ogden Water Sketchbooks are almost full and have turned out brilliantly with lots of beautiful paintings and drawings.  Angie and Viv are very impressed with the artworks especially when you realise that they were mostly created outside, often with only old tree trunks for tables and sometimes it was quite windy, chilly and damp.  These wonderful sketchbooks show that working out of doors, surrounded by nature is a great experience and everyone should try it.  You will notice loads of new colours, textures, sounds and smells.

Saffiyah's  lively reservoir spreads across two pages of her sketchbook.

This cheerful goose is by Noriea - she has used a goose quill pen to draw with.

Hanah has observed carefully the different trees and plants along the reservoir bank.

 

Earth Paint Rabbits from Ogden Water

Here is a selection of excellent rabbit pictures created with the amazing earth paint from Ogden Water.

      

       
       Obeid has made a very colourful painting of a rabbit in the sunshine.

      

      
       Nayyir's rabbit has a wonderful shy face.

      
       This rabbit by Zain looks a bit angry! 

Hello Salt Grammar School

Exciting news!  A new school is joining the See You Outside Project on Thursday.  Young people from Salt Grammar School are coming on an outdoor art trip with Viv and Angie to Buck Wood in Bradford.  The children from Brackenhill Primary School say ‘HELLO ‘ and hope the trip has good weather.  Next week the Ogden Water group will be sending a special message in a bottle from Brackenhill to Salt school, but before then they say ‘have a look at the photo albums and see what we've been doing’.

This is what Buck Wood looks like right now: 

                   

The fresh new leaves are like green lace and drifts of bluebells are coming out all around the wood.

Return To Ogden Water

Our second visit to Ogden Water was a great success.  The weather forecast was for plenty of rain and even hail so we felt very lucky to have lots of lovely sunshine instead!  We were able to work outside all day.

To begin with, we made a special kind of lovely brown paint.  A few weeks ago Angie and Viv collected some earth from beside the reservoir.  The earth was dried out and sieved to get rid of bits of grass and lumps.  Then we ground the earth in a mortar and pestle. Everyone took a turn at grinding the earth to a fine powder.  After that we added some Gum Arabic to bind the powdered earth into paint.  We also put in some water to dilute it and a drop of lavender oil to make the paint smell nice.

There are lots of wild rabbits at Ogden Reservoir. You can see them all the time running around and nibbling on the grass.  We all know that the wild rabbits live in holes in the ground and so we thought it would be a good idea to use the brown earth paint to make pictures of the rabbits in our sketchbooks.  It was fun and everyone enjoyed looking closely at the bunnies.

Here is a selection from the feedback comments made by the children at the end of the day.

New Work

Everyone made beautiful artwork in their sketchbooks last wednesday, using lots of different materials and subjects.  Tohid made a careful study of the unusual structures that connect the reservoir to the dam and used coloured pencils to show the detail of all the stone work and the iron grid at the top.

    

Aisha has made a wonderful study of the bridge that curves along the overflow from the reservoir.

   

Iqra worked very carefully to make this painting of the strange looking Muscovy Duck:

   

Kellan used the Pentel brushes to make this sensitive study of a Mallard Duck on the water:

    

A Busy Morning at Brackenhill

There were so many different and exciting things going on at school on Wednesday morning, everywhere was full! So we turned the dining room into a temporary 'studio', with big plastic tablecloths to keep the paint under control. Before starting work, we had a chance to see our blog and make comments. You can read these under the previous post below.

Everyone worked hard all morning, making beautiful new pictures in the manila sketchbooks we made ourselves two weeks ago. During last week's trip to Ogden Water we took lots of photos to use at school. Angie made some really big prints of them to use as reference and you could almost imagine you were still at the reservoir. We also had many photos of ducks as they are so popular with everyone and interesting to paint and draw.

Three cheers for Viv who had sharpened all the crayon pencils!

On Monday we hope to post some pictures of the new work, but in the meantime here's a lovely duck feather to admire.

Our first day at Ogden Reservoir

Annie's Duck

Yesterday we were very brave and spent the day at Ogden Water. It was very cold and damp with hardly any sunshine for our walk around the reservoir. Along the way we stopped to make artworks in our sketchbooks, the ones we made last week in class.

We used a new kind of paintbrush called Aquash made by Pentel. Its like a felt pen but you can fill it up with watercolour paint and choose your own colours. The Aquash brushes are easy to carry around and you don't need to bring water bottles or palettes. We made pictures of the dark wintery trees, the golden moor and the greyish blue water.

After lunch we used quill pens made from goose feathers to draw the ducks and geese that live at Ogden Water. It was fun to make pictures of birds using feathers. We drew with black ink and white ink on the Manila paper.

Our drawing ink took a long time to dry because the weather was so chilly and damp so while we waited, we watched the ducks fighting over bread. We also collected lots of small, beautiful duck feathers. Back in the Ogden Water Education Room it was lovely and cosy as we packed our bags ready for the coach journey back to Brackenhill. Here are three ducks drawn by Shubhon.