An artist who started her own artistic career with a doodle on an envelope aims to inspire local children to follow in her footsteps.

Irene Tyack will formally open a new art block at Chipping Norton School next Thursday, July 17.

And to celebrate the event she is launching a poetry competition on the theme of her own paintings of a tribe of sunny characters wearing yellow hats.

Mrs Tyack, a grandmother and mother of six who lives with her ostrich farmer husband Vince at Church Westcote, near Chipping Norton, only started painting 10 years ago.

Irene said: "It all began in the early 1990s when I was idly doodling on the back of a brown envelope.

"Nowadays, my imagination is constantly bubbling with new images of the tribe - I never know what is going to happen to them next."

She is hoping some of the same spontaneity will rub off on students at the secondary school and its nine feeder primary schools when she invites them to take part in a poetry competition - From 4 to 40 Lines.

It will culminate in a collection of winning and short-listed poems which will be published, with proceeds from sales going to Chipping Norton School.

The new art block has cost more than £2m and has four new art classrooms, art and technology offices and a gallery space for exhibitions of student work, as well as refurbished technology areas.

Headteacher Simon Duffy said: "The facilities we now have are outstanding and the quality of work produced reflects this.

"Students and staff tell me that they love the spaces and this is clear to see on the faces of young people working in them."

Mrs Tyack will be formally opening the art block at 7.30pm when she will perform a quick doodle of her yellow hat tribe which the school will then display as a memento of the event.

Also on display will be student work inspired by the artist Robert Delaunay, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth and the mathematician Fibonacci.