This was the last day of the Clemente’s. I had two year 8 groups one after the other, first thing this morning. The first group I started off using the paintings I had made. I told them that I had been doing some expressive self-portraits and that this is how I had made them and why there were turtles in them and so on. Off we went and the pictures the children made were quite close to the models I showed them. There were even some turtles, ‘because I like them too’. I showed them the Clemente at the end and explained that I had been influenced by these pictures. I asked them if they though that seeing the Clemente early would have changed what the did and some said that it would have made it easier, they would have had more ideas from them and so on. More or less the same as was said yesterday by the group that saw the Clementes but not mine about my stuff. Interesting.

The last group I showed them the slideshow whilst my pictures were hanging up at the back. A couple of them spotted the links and started pointing to mine and the slideshow, especially the one with the star fish over the face and the clouds which were pretty close to overt lifts of Clemente.

I showed them what I had done, just the idea of putting things down and then putting the face behind the thing and constructing it in that way. And off they went. A teaching assistant was in and I gave her a piece of paper and off she went too. She wasn’t sure what to do and I suggested a few ideas about what she did at the weekend and so on, whatever was in her head and she drew rugby posts and pets.

We chatted after and I asked if the things I had made were a useful interpretation of the Clemente or did they get in the way. She thought about it for a bit and then said that my things made it more possible to do the painting because I showed you how it was done and that this was not necessarily obvious from the  Clemente. I said it seemed to me that I had taken some things and disregarded other things, that I had interpreted the Clemente and taken out things that seemed relevant to the teaching project and she agreed. She said it made it possible to see me do it. I said you should be looking at the work of Clemente though, he is a proper millionaire artist endorsed by the art system and I am just a teacher in Lowestoft. She said that I was pretty good and that she would rather look at my things than Clemente’s.