On Friday 27 November we went to Colchester Zoo to collect and create images and sketches to help us to add more pattern, texture and detail to our artwork, as well as having a first-hand view of all the animals and researching them further. We mainly focused on spots and stripes (patterns) and sea life; our research on sea life will go towards helping us create a final piece and adding more detail to the work in our sketch books. When we got there we went into a room that had different parts of animals in, such as: alligator skulls, tigers and cheetah fur, snakes and spiders’ skin, shells and coral, seahorses and sea urchins, turtles and insects. This allowed us to get close up pictures and ask any questions we had to find out more about the animals.

While we were looking at the animals we made small sketches in our sketch books and explored different ways of drawing them: at the same time we were thinking about what media we could use to create more detailed drawings of them. After the zoo trip we put together two A3 pages of sketches, paintings and studies that we had collected. It was a worthwhile day and everyone benefited and enjoyed the experience.

Beth Pilkington (Year 10)