As part of our World Book Day celebrations this week all of the staff members in school offered a story to share and children chose the book they'd like to listen to. However, Mr Sturgess had a sneaky trick up his sleeve for people who chose the book 'Fins, fluff and other stuff' because he had arranged for a surprise visit from the co-author and illustrator of the story to read it instead!
As you can see by the faces, the children were mesmerised by this excellent story which asks the question, "What would it be like to be made of other stuff?"
Shameless promotion for Bruno's book here.....
The children then asked questions and Mr Merz showed them some incredible original artwork and talked about the process of modern illustration. Firstly, he draws in pencil, which he then scans and flips so that he can trace it....
....then he completes the new image with watercolour paint and pen. Finally, it is scanned into the computer where Bruno enhances the colour and adds finishing touches. Here we are comparing an original watercolour drawing and how it looked in the final published version.
The children were fascinated and amazed by the hand-painted original artwork and they really enjoyed spotting the differences between these and the final piece.
What a brilliant story reading session!
Mr Merz also kindly agreed to stay and share some of his work from other projects with Class 4 who were also suitably impressed by his orignal artwork.
Here Bruno talked about how he altered his style of drawing in order to suit a particular brief.
You may have even seen his work in Hallmark as he is responsible for many of the Forever Friends designs......here is an unused Halloween design.
Finally, Mr Merz gave us a lesson on how it is possible to make a huge range of emotional facial expressions solely by altering eye brows and mouth shape.
The children drew as many different expressions as they could on their piece of paper, labelling them all with the emotion they felt was the best fit.
We are all so grateful to Bruno for volunteering to come in and share his work with us - it was a fantastic visit and I was very proud of the behaviour of all of the children as they made a fantastic impression and were extremely polite and interested throughout. Some of the pupils seemed genuinely inspired by this visit and Bruno's passion for his work. What a great way to spend a Friday afternoon!
If you'd like a closer look at any of Bruno's artwork you can find him here:
https://www.behance.net/brunomerz
He is fantastic. One of the best artists of this era.
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