About me

In August 2012 I started a challenge to make a drawing every day in the year leading up to my fiftieth birthday but when I reached 365 I kept going and have recently reached 3000 days of consecutive drawing. As you can see this has become a habit that I cannot break and I continue to post a drawing daily. The drawings are available to view on this the main page of this blog, are tweeted daily (@JeanEd70) and posted on Instagram (@70jeanne). After posting so many drawings it is now possible for me to look back and identify some ongoing preoccupations or sequences of interest in certain techniques, materials or sources of inspiration.

Since August 2013 I have been involved in the art twitter hashtags, beginning with #DrawingAugust and this social media project has had an impact on my work. I also participate in the sketchbook circle, a collaborative project that involves maintaining and exchanging sketchbooks with other artists and teachers. This has led me to try new techniques and approaches which are becoming apparent in my printmaking and drawing.

I make collagraph prints using a variety of mark making and collage techniques. At present my work is small scale enough to print at home on a small press in the kitchen. Many of my prints are inspired by local landscape and buildings as well as visits to museums and galleries. I’m also experimenting with more abstract compositions of irregular shapes. They can be seen on this page of my blog: https://jeandrawingaday.wordpress.com/collagraph-prints/

I have regularly attended life drawing classes and I feel that the discipline of life drawing underpins all sorts of my drawing and making art in general.  Last year I began (with another artist, Minnie Teckman) a group called ‘DrawingOutside:Northants’ that meets on Tuesday evenings around Northampton to draw from the landscape. In time we hope this will become a recognised chapter of the Urban Sketchers movement. I regularly draw with the London Urban Sketchers and  and Birmingham Urban Sketchers. You can see our drawings here: https://drawingoutsidenorthants.wordpress.com/

Images available to view on Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeaned1/
Ongoing CV of exhibitions I have participated in: https://jeandrawingaday.wordpress.com/exhibitions/

Member of the Northampton Town and County Art Society http://bit.ly/NTandC

Member of the Kettering and District Art Society

Art Education

As well as making my own art I’ve a huge interest in the learning and teaching of art in schools. I was a primary school teacher for nearly twenty years and most of the time I was also an art co-ordinator. I was on the art working group during The Dearing Review of the National Curriculum many years ago!

In 2012 my book ‘Teaching Primary Art’ was published by Pearson. It is a practical handbook for people who teach art and support pupils in art lessons. It was inspired by a HLTA Art Specialism course that I taught in Northampton, Leicester and Derbyshire to support HLTAs who often found themselves teaching art in PPA time. It is aimed at the non-specialist who wants to support learning in art or teach art.

Over the last few years I have taken part in some NSEAD projects. I’ve kept a record of these on my art education based blog called http://sketchbookcircle14.wordpress.com/as well as posting some of my writing on this blog on the page called ‘Writing about Drawing’ (see above).

In my work as Senior Lecturer in the School of Education I am taking part in a project called Northampton Inspire which explored the place of the arts in STEM subjects. You can see more about this here Northampton Inspire

Publications

2014 ‘Inspired by digital’ article in AD magazine Issue 11

2013 ‘Close Encounters’ article in Springboard Stories magazine Issue 8 Woodlands (with Georgina Hand)

2013 Inspiring drawing through digital collaboration. Presentation at #TMWBORO

2013 ‘#DrawingAugust’ a blog post published on The Big Draw blog

2013 ‘The Drawing Theatre’ a blog post published on the London Drawing blog

2013 ‘Teaching Primary Art’ a book published by Pearson

2009  ‘Who is teaching art in primary schools?’ Article in A’N’D the NSEAD magazine – Issue 33

2007  ‘Making a Link with your Local Gallery’ Article in A’N’D the NSEAD magazine –   Issue 22