Plenty of orange and black as Morpeth school produces artwork for project run by the National Gallery

Children from Reception to Year 4 at St Robert’s Catholic First School in Morpeth spent a week working on Tigers in Our Town – an art project that saw the school building transformed into a gallery featuring 150 pieces of tiger-related artwork.

Assisted by artist and primary school teacher Victoria Marcantonio of company Art4, the pupils worked to each create their own tiger using a range of different media.

The Reception class used tissue paper to make their animals, while Year 1 worked with Sharpie pens and paint, Year 2 used pastels and collaged leaves, Year 3 created 3D tigers using paper plates and Year 4 shaded and toned their pictures with sketching pencils.

Headteacher David Sutcliffe said: “Each year, St Robert’s takes part in Take One Picture, a project run by the National Gallery.

“The project focuses on a painting from the Gallery and this year the painting was ‘Surprised’, which is by the French artist Henri Rousseau and depicts a tiger in the jungle.

“We are a heritage school and we decided to combine our commitment to local heritage and art to create tigers roaming around locations very familiar to our children.

“Their amazing tigers are in the corridors, halls and classrooms. The children are extremely proud of their work and we are very grateful to Victoria for her expertise and effort.”

Previous art projects at the school, a member of the Bishop Bewick Catholic Education Trust, have included Illustrator Week – where Northumberland artist and illustrator Kate Simpson worked with the children.