CHILDREN from St Catherine's Primary School in Bridport followed in the footsteps a famous artist this week when they created a painting in the style of Fra Newbery.

As part of a month-long celebration of Fra Newbery's work, called the Far Newbery Trail, children from five primary schools in Bridport will be working with artist Darrell Wakelam to explore their local heritage.

He said: "This is a great project to be part of. Fra Newbery's work is a fantastic source of inspiration and hopefully the children involved in the art workshops will enjoy learning about him and producing their own artwork based on his paintings."

And that is just what they did at St Catherine's on Tuesday. The whole school was involved in the art day, either creating their own picture in his style or exploring other aspects of Fra Newbery's legacy.

St Catherine's head Veronique Singer said it was a really good day and all the children had a brilliant time.

She said: "There were 40 children involved in making the large picture and they took the cliffs here as their inspiration and put local people in the picture like Fra Newbery did. They have our priest Father Jonathon, a member of staff and other people - like Bart Simpson and a Tardis.

"Fra Newbery did the same - in one of his paintings in the town hall he has Henry VIII visiting Bridport, which he obviously never did."

She said the children who were not working on the large picture were doing related topics - such as designing chairs in the style of one of Fra Newbery's pupils - Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The large picture will be in an exhibition to be held at the town hall and the other art work is destined for an exhibition of schools' work in Bridport Arts Centre.