Choose a racehorse or ballet painting by Degas and make a model of a dancer or a horse from it. Notice how you have to imagine the back of the figure. Like Charles Dickens, make models of the characters in your favourite story.

Choose an animal or person from one of your own paintings and create a model of this figure. Think about the muscles and how all the parts of the body fit together. Make several drawings from your model, showing different views from that in your painting.

Compare the work of the contemporary sculptor, Ron Mueck with the Little Dancer. What are the different feelings that these two artists inspire in you?

Make drawings from all sides of the Little Dancer that explore the curves of the body from top to bottom. Make a wire sculpture from these drawings showing the most important of these curves One of the things that shocked the public about the Impressionists was the sketchy roughness of their pictures. Compare the smoothly finished marble and bronze sculptures of the pre-Impressionist period with Degas’ Little Dancer and explore why the public might have found its rougher finish equally scandalous.