Alumna Visits Upper-Sixth Fine Art Pupils

We had a great virtual visitor to our Upper Sixth Fine Art lesson last week: Blanche Brown, who studied Fine Art, History and Biology at A level and left Croydon High in 2017 to study History and History of Art at Birmingham University, recently graduating with a 2:1.  It was lovely to see Blanche again; she shared some of her university experiences with Isabella, Mia and Aleeya and discussed her top essay-writing skills.  Currently our Upper-Sixth students are writing a 3,000-word extended prose piece on a topic of their choice, which relates to their practical work.  Their essay titles will become a little more refined over the next few months, but they have all selected exciting topics such as:

• Should photojournalism be censored?
• Analysing the relationship between aesthetics and popularity in portraiture
• How do artists such as Nicola Samori and Caravaggio use a macabre and Renaissance art theme to symbolise, relate and cope with death?

Blanche spoke to them about her 3,000-word art essay that she wrote at Croydon High and shared some top tips, as well as answering the questions they had.

Blanche’s main top tips were: “Don’t over complicate it; less is more. Start with a theme or a piece of artwork or an artist and go from there. I always use a question for my art essays and always keep referring to it throughout. After every point, ask yourself: have I answered my question with a point, backed up that point with evidence from sources and explored it well with my own ideas and artistic responses?”

It was a fantastic way to end the week and motivated Upper Sixth to tackle chapter one of their essay this week in their mocks.

Mrs Elizabeth Smith

Head of Art and 3D Design