Children's Art Classes at ZSL London and Whipsnade Zoo - August 2014

Over the summer holidays I’ve been teaching some children’s art classes at London and Whipsnade Zoo. I’ve designed the art classes to have an educational twist by encouraging the children to look at elements such as conservation, environment and zoo signage, as well as taking them round the zoo to draw from life. We started the classes by spending the mornings out in the zoo sketching and fact finding. In the afternoons we returned to our wonderful studio in the Rainforest exhibit for some Monoprinting to continue the development their line drawings. Monoprinting is very forgiving and all of the children were able to make some fantastic prints. The most popular class by far was the Penguin Poster design class. During this class we took the opportunity to look at some of the fantastic signage around the zoo to see how we could make our designs eye catching and informative, before visiting the penguins to find out more about them and make some sketches to use in the studio. There were some truly imaginative posters, complete with facts, jokes, and lift up flaps for questions an answers.