Sistine Chapel Day

by Cecelia Wishart (M)

During the Christmas term the Middle Sixth A Level Art group took part in a Sistine Chapel Day. We were put into small groups of 4-6 people and were given a task to use chalks, charcoals and graphites to create a huge scale art piece of a painting in the Sistine chapel of our choice. In the morning we spent time scaling up the small print out copies to the size that our art was going to be. Although it didn’t seem necessary at the time, as the day went on, we realised just how much help it was going to be to us. We had all day to complete the piece, which seemed like a particularly long time but boy, how did time fly!!

Each group had a different colour as their base, which made each group’s art different and unique to the others. Usually in both GCSE art and A Level art we spend time working individually to create our own work, but this day gave us a chance to be able to collaborate as a group. I don’t think that many of us had known beforehand how nice it was to work in a group of people for such a long time, where we could use each artist’s strengths and different styles of working to our advantage. As time went on the drawings started to come together and it was amazing to see the differences between them all. Some were more contemporary and others more cartoon, although this was what made it so fun to be a part of. Each group focussed on different formal elements i.e. tone and line and you could really see this in the end result. After a day of drawing with chalk and charcoal I didn’t think that it would ever come out of my hands, but it was worth it because when the finished pieces were hung up in Main Hall over the balcony, we could finally see what all our hard work was for.