Net School’s Art Club: Creativity, Community, and Colour!

If you’re looking for a space to relax, get creative, and connect with other students on a Wednesday afternoon, Net School’s Art Club, run by Mrs Reed, is the place for you! Open to all our current students and completely free of charge, it’s become one of our most popular extra-curricular activities.

This year, we’ve explored a wide range of exciting art activities. One of our highlights has been our focus on Native American art, where students learned about cultural symbolism, patterns, and the work of artists including Dyani White Hawk and Gordon Coons and have tried new techniques in painting and working with stencils. It has been a fantastic way to combine creativity with cultural appreciation and history.

We’ve also dived into watercolour techniques, experimenting with blending, layering, and creating beautiful washes of colour in sunset studies. Whether you’re a beginner or already confident with a brush, these sessions have been a calming and rewarding way to develop new skills.

Sketching has been another key part of our sessions. From ‘speedy sketches’ of animals, birds and bugs where we challenge ourselves to draw against the clock, to more detailed studies of the human face, students have had the chance to build confidence in their drawing abilities while expressing their own unique styles.

And thinking about individuality, one of the most fun parts of each week is when we share our artwork at the end of each session. This might be the task we have been working on that week, or something else that we’ve been creating in our own time. This year, students have shared some amazing art and craft, from clay sculptures and crochet work to full costumes that they have designed and sewn for Comic Con events!

There has also been some crossover from our Arts Award courses, whereby students tackling the ‘Skill Share’ element of their Bronze Arts Award have shared an art skill with the Club members to fulfil that element of their Award – this term we had a brilliant demonstration of how to create a sgraffito effect with oil pastels and paint, which was a lot of fun.

So, as you can tell, Art Club is about much more than just making art. It’s a space where students from different year groups can come together to chat and share their ideas and artwork. It helps build a real sense of community, giving everyone the chance to interact, collaborate, and support one another in a relaxed and friendly environment.

So whether you attend every week or just drop in when you can, you’ll always be welcome at Art Club. So grab your sketchbook, pick up a paintbrush, and come create with us – we’d love to see you there!