BTEC L3 Hever Castle Visit

Every year the BTEC L3 Art and Design courses take a trip to a major tourist destination as part of their first terms studies. This trip provides the students with a wide range of first hand primary observational material; but is also invaluable in bonding the students together, giving them the confidence to explore and discover as a group.

This year we visited historic Hever Castle in Kent. Hever is known for its stunning 13th century castle and surrounding landscaped grounds that host jousting, arts and crafts fairs and a range of children's activities.

Hever certainly did not disappoint, with its students and staff inspired by the beautifully set gardens and tudor age arts ad crafts.  

This trip will now provide all the material needed for the students first projects in Fine Art, Textiles and Graphics.

Thank you Hever, for the memories!

Design your future

Our BTEC L3 students have been once gain out and about, this time at the UCAS event Design your future.

This is an amazing opportunity for our students to sample a range of pathways that could shape their futures and speak to the Universities they are thinking of applying to.

Tilgate National Park - BTEC L3 Trip

Tilgate Park in Crawly hosted this years Visual Arts Department annual vocational research trip. All students studying the BTEC L3 Diploma were invited to draw from life, experiencing all this wonderful park has to offer. 

                         

BTEC L3 Upper students in the grounds of the Maze Cafe

This trip is always one of the highlights of the year and all the work produced is incorporated in BTEC L3 students projects for the first term.

BTEC L3 Lower students use natural surroundings to inspire their studies

Thank you once again to Tilgate Park for making us so welcome.

Student work: Robert Bragg

Our BTEC National Art and Design and A Level Graphic student Robert Bragg spent 2012 creating a drawing a day! It's an amazing collection of work and to celebrate completing he's exhibiting his work at Mine Gallery in Carshalton. The exhibition is open from 19th January - 26th January, you can find out more information, HERE. If you can't make it to the gallery you could always check out his new drawings - he's creating for another year of drawings for 2013 and this time his documenting them on his blog! You can see the drawings day by day, HERE.

student work: Bite the ballot!

In June 2012 our BTEC National Art and Design students worked on a 'live' brief for the Bite The Ballot student competition to create artwork based on the theme 'inspired impressions'. The artwork the students created was uploaded to the Bite The Ballot website and members of the public were able to vote for their favourite pieces. In November four of our students (whose work is picked above!) were announced as winners and their artwork was on display in The Houses of Parliament for a special exhibition. We've just got back from the event and it was wonderful to see their work on display and watch them receive their award certificate! Well done!

student work: Jan Von Holleben

The work of Jan Von Holleben never fails to inspire our students! We've talked about his work before here on the blog, particularly his series 'Dreams of Flying' and our AS Photography students had a go at recreating their own pieces in the same style last year as part of their AS-A2 project. Now our BTEC National Art and Design students have had a go too. The students worked in groups and created their own props and concepts based on their current project theme 'Journeys'. You can see the full collection of images HERE on our Flickr page! 

Student work: Christmas Card Competition

Well done to Aaron from our BTEC National Art and Design Y13 group - his card has been selected as Coulsdon Sixth Form College's christmas card for 2012 so will be making its way out to the college's contacts over the festive season. You can see the full class's card designs on flickr, HERE. 

Craft Fair 2012!

Our students at the stall! You can see the full set of photos HERE. 

Last Saturday our year 13 BTEC National Art and Design students ran their own stall at the Croydon South Rotary Craft Fair. The students designed and hand printed a range of Christmas cards, gift tags and wrapping paper. The students created the range as part of a live brief for a professional practise unit and the Craft Fair provided them with the opportunity to sell their designs in a professional environment. The event was wonderful, the students got some fantastic feedback from the public and were successful in making a profit, the proceeds of which will contribute towards their end of year exhibition. 

BTEC National Art and Design: Craft Fair

Our BTEC National Art and Design students have got a stall at the Croydon South Rotary Craft Fair this Saturday! They'll be selling their own unique designs including hand printed Christmas Cards, gift tags and wrapping paper. If you can make it we'd love to see you there! 

Trip: New Blood and New Designers

Last week we visited the New Blood and New Designers exhibitions with our BTEC L3 Art and Design - both shows were brilliant and the students had a great time! 

Student Work: Animation

Our BTEC National students are coming up to the end of their animation project and their final animations are almost complete! They look great! You can see the animations so far on YouTube or Flickr and if you want to see some of the initial developments have a look at our previous posts here and here. 

Student Work: BTEC Animated Gifs

Some more fantastic animation work by our BTEC National Art and Design students! The students had to come up with a way of visually representing different subject areas within the college through a self portrait animated gif. Here are some examples of photography, english, spanish and business studies! 

You can see other examples of the work from this project here and here! 

Student Work: BTEC National Stop-Motion

Our BTEC National students are currently working on an Animation project; they have been commissioned to create a promotional animation to advertise Coulsdon Sixth Form college. They have been experimenting with a range of different animation techniques and these are some of the stop-motion initial experiments; the piece above was created using hand drawn work, collage and found objects and includes guitar music recorded by the student who created it too! You can see the more examples on our Flickr and YouTube channel.