This term we are going back to basics and focusing on different painting or drawing tools. And this week it’s back to basics with our subject matter – classical sculptures. We have a few plaster casts in the studio, and I printed out some pictures of Greek and Roman statues to choose from. Taking inspiration from this Access Art session, I introduced the use of pen and ink – in which we find the shadows using a soft brush and coloured ink, using…
This week I asked the kids to make book covers. What book was up to them, and what age. I showed them some examples, and we talked about what makes a good cover, how you need to match the font to the style and content of the book, how book covers indicate for what age they are meant etc. And then of course, some weren’t satisfied with just a cover and made a whole book! Some of our older children wanted instead to…
This week I showed the kids message art – that is art that uses text to convey a message, usually a political one, often using photomontage. The artists we looked at included Barbara Kruger, Russian constructivists such as Alexandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, and Hannah Hoch. The children of course didn’t have to go political, and some were more comical, such as Leonardo’s ‘Never give up’ which was left unfinished, as if the he had given up – I assure you this was…
This week I took inspiration from a painting by my grandmother, who was also an artist. She often worked with text, and in this painting she painted her letters in transparent layers so that the colours change when they overlap. The kids used coloured acetate to create a similar effect and, understandably for some, the technique suggested pictures or patterns rather than text.
Continuing our theme of text, this time we used text (in the form of newspapers) for its different tonal values. Different sized text torn up will create different tonal shades – dark to light – and with that you have you palette and can create anything.Some also couldn’t resist adding a bit of colour from the newspapers! I assembled a group of fairly simple fruit, veg and white porcelain cups. As a warm up activity, we did ink and charcoal drawings of the…
foThe last two weeks of term we managed to build and paint spectacular houses, as well as finish off the hats, the transfers and anything else left finsihed ready for the exhibition next week. The houses were made with cotton fabric stiffened with PVA, a technique learned from fabric artist Angie Hughe. This was done before the class and left to dry outside in the sun. The result was a fabric that behaved more like card, so it could hold its shape, particularly…
This week we got to try out some millinery – using vilene (stiffened fabric), metal hair bands and sinamay (the net stuff that milliners use). AS well as my box of random fabrics. We had a wide range of designs from the pre-existing such as (tiny) top hats, witches hat and beefeater hats to the completely new such as the drooping swan and the fire hat. The stapler was invaluable here as a quick and easy way to attach the fabric without waiting…
Over two weeks (along with hat making – see my next post) the kids have been working with iron-on transfer dyes, also called disperse dyes. Here you paint onto paper and when it is dry you can iron what you’ve painted onto fabric. This is a great technique to play with as you do not have to simply transfer what you paint, you can cut it up, and mask areas when you are transferring – very much like printing. The first step is…
This week we used wire and fabric to make amazing sculptures. The idea came from Access Art but we didn’t use plinths this time, and the kids didn’t stick to people. The basic technique is to make a simple wire sculpture – e.g. a stick figure – and to cover it in strips of fabric ( I used a sheet from a charity shop). We used thin wire to keep wrapped around the fabric to keep it in place. Then they cut up…