Supporting children in Art: in-school support led by Emma Shannon: Go Sketch

Emma ShannonArt Consultant

Emma Shannon is a specialist art teacher who also creates art in her own right. She qualified as a primary teacher in 2006 and, after seeing a need for more drawing and painting support in primary schools, was inspired to set up her own art company ‘Go Sketch’ in 2011.  Emma believes that we should teach art and design in a confidence-building way, using sketchbooks to encourage pupils to develop their art skills while exploring their own creative ideas without fear of judgement.  Pupils are encouraged to realise that there is no such thing as ‘good art’ and ‘bad art’, there is just art that we like or don’t like and everybody likes different types of art! At the heart of her teaching is the acknowledgment that, just like artists, drawing or creating something you don’t like is an essential part of the creative process.  Emma has enjoyed travelling around the UK delivering inspiring workshops to both primary and secondary pupils for over 12 years. She would love to help your pupils increase their confidence, develop their art skills and enjoy the wellbeing that comes hand in hand with creating art.

Workshops on offer

We love bringing our many art workshops to schools around the South West and beyond. We have a range of art workshops to choose from and can even plan a bespoke art workshop based on your school’s topic or curriculum needs for that term. We can either work with one group of students or split the time into sessions with different groups. We can also come in over a few days if you would like us to work with the whole school (multiple booking discounts available). 

Cartooning

Explore the world of cartooning in this fun workshop. We will be looking at the secret language of cartoons and how to create your very own character.

Comic Strips

This workshop is one of our most popular school workshops and will introduce you to the secrets of creating comic strips. The pupils develop their own cartoon characters with different expressions and will then learn how to structure a funny comic strip with their very own character.

Graphic novels 

Graphic novels are a beautiful art form and in this workshop pupils will learn about character development, world building and story planning when creating the beginning of their very own graphic novel. This is a great starter workshop for a term filled with comics or can be used as a stand along workshop to create a comic. 

Zendoodle 

This is a great art workshop for schools who would like a calming, mindful activity. Explore the beautiful art of many artists who use the Zendoodle technique. The Zendoodle technique involves creating intricate patterns with shapes to build an entire form. The method has proved to be very popular in recent years as it is very relaxing and highly addictive.

Clay sculpture

This is a great workshop if you have never worked with clay or have limited experience as you can learn as a teacher alongside Emma while she teaches your pupils. Learn a range of hand-building and joining techniques to create imaginative sculptures.

We will be using air-dry clay which you can then seal once dry. 

Anime Portraits

This workshop explores the popular style of manga or anime. Manga is a Japanese drawing style that is used to create some graphic novels and comics in Japan. Anime is short for animation and uses this popular style to create animated movies and series.

You will learn how to create your own anime portrait in this popular school workshop.

Space Art

Blast off into space and create your own deep space themed art. Lots of activities to choose from including deep space pastel drawing, universe inside jars, astronaut art and surreal moons.

Tailor-made Workshops

Emma is also happy to create a workshop based on your needs as a school. If you need a fun starting point for a topic or an activity for a themed art week, Emma can help.

If you’d like to work with Emma please get in touch iain.simper@learningpartnership.uk