To showcase all we’ve achieved this past few years – both in person and online – we had a fantastic exhibition of art work by the adults and children who’ve been attending our art classes – supporting and being supported by Art CLASS London. It was a really lovely evening, full of joy and celebration, and a great chance for all our artists to meet and share their experiences and achievements. These kinds of events where artists can get together and not only…
It was the last week of term this week so we made masks ready to wear for the end of term exhibition! We had templates to start with but many children decided against these weren’t the shapes they wanted and they needed to start from scratch. I’d provided lots of different materials to attach to them (sequins, feathers, cardboard packaging, patterned papers etc.) as well as paint. Some children even added sculptural elements like beaks and horns. The results were all so different…
This week the challenge was to make sculptures out of some sheets of white paper (and some tracing paper for an interesting alternative). After demonstrating how to safely use scalpels I showed them some basic methods to start with, but many invented their own methods. No sellotape and only small amounts of glue were needed to make these intricate and delicate sculptures – some were creatures, some were abstract, all were beautiful. This was a challenge set by Josef Albers to his students…
So this week I let the kids go wild with cardboard, glue and other assorted packaging! We first found a few basic ways of making the cardboard go high but stable (such as slits, flanges, stacks and bookends). And then the children went crazy with their sculptures and even inventions – see the happiness machine!
Now we have completed Mona Brookes’ drawing exercises (although of course everyone’s drawing will benefit from practicing them regularly!) we are moving onto working with much greater freedom and preparing for the end of term exhibition. So week 7 was all about painting but there was only one rule – no paintbrushes! Instead we had all manner of implements, many originally designed for cleaning! Including: scrapers, toothbrushes, combs, scourers, sponges, squeegees… The children were very inventive in their creations!
This week we tackled on of the tings people find hardest to draw – hands. But I had a trick to help – tracing our hand on a plastic viewfinder with a grid, and then using that to transpose the tracing onto a drawing. The principle is the same as in past weeks – break down what you are drawing into the basic lines and shapes, so you brain sees the lines not the complicated object. Easier said than done of course, but…
This week we tackled drawing upside down. The idea here is to try and disengage the thinking side of your brain and engage the visual. Often when we look we are scanning to take in everything that is there, recognising, categorising and interpreting it all. When it comes to drawing this doesn’t always help us because we are not looking at exactly what is there, we are trying to think about what is there. When we turn what we are trying to draw…
