Thursday 24 December 2015

Camp Day 3

I didn't take any photos from day two's project. It was a blur of activity and while the finished art was fantastic I had family plans that required a quick clean up and a fast run home to gather all the things that needed to come with us on the bus to get to my sister's place.

Day two was inspired by the late and truly great Rex Ray and his collage work. I wish i'd had the time to document the finished art as there were some amazing renditions of Ray's collages and some very unique collages as well.

Day Three was an experiment in abstract painting using art dice and limitations.

I went around the table three times and had each student roll a colour die to build their painting palette. If they rolled the same colour they had already rolled they rolled again. I had the odd coincidence of the people at each end of the table rolling the exact same colours in the exact same order another odd coincidence with the second step too. Once we had a colour palette created I then had each student roll a shape die to pick the primary shape their painting would feature. In my first group I had an even assortment of circles, ovals, rectangles, squares and triangles with not a single star shape rolled in the group of 10. The second group made up for that with seven of the eleven in the group rolling the star shape.

Once they had their colours and shape I had them use charcoal to draw their main shape 3-5 times on the paper. Then they were invited to break up their painting space using lines and other shapes of their choice. They then filled a painting palette up with the colours they rolled and white. They were invited to use the colours straight, to blend with white and to mix with the other colours in the palette but they were not allowed to share paint or add other colours different from their rolled choices. when they were finished painting the entire surface I would give them black and a fine brush to outline the different shapes. This was the class that I had a totally finished not that into painting "when is my Mom coming?" student. I managed to get a second painting out of him and then he spent the rest of the class reading a book to himself. The rest of the group kept on painting to a very colourful result.


















Camp

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week i taught the Winter Break Camp at Artspace. Camp lessons are an hour and fifteen minutes and planning for them involves more steps and detail than a regular hour long class. There is nothing I dread more than hearing thirty minutes into a class than "Teacher, I'm finished"

Of course I hear the dulcet sounds of that phrase nearly every lesson I teach  the younger groups (aged 3-6) so the dread is in the anticipation of it as much as in the utterance. I've gotten pretty good at redirecting back to the art but there's a good chance that the I'm done will be so complete for whatever reason (it's the last day of camp and it's two days until christmas and I'm just done already!) that I have to allow for it and hope that it's not contagious which it can be and then am I ever in for a bout of mild chaos.

This camp was no exception and I was prepared with an extra project on day one, the instruction to make another and as many as you can get to on day two and a fresh sheet with all the colours on day three.

So camp rundown:

Day 1:
multi step painting and collage of a winter forest sunrise to celebrate the Solstice

















End of Term Catch Up

Blur. The last tow weeks are all a blur and a whir and something else that rhymes.

Fall term ended with altered portraits in Art Exploration. I'd love to share the final art but I don't want to violate the privacy of my students and their families. I can say that every one had lots of fun drawing and painting on top of each other's pictures.

From end of term I leapt right into a Parents Night Out class. I had my group create baby monsters from mixed media materials. With a group with ages 5 to 10 I'm pretty pleased with the outcomes.






Window Dressing

One of my fellow art instructors at Artspace and I got together over the last week and a 1/2 to decorate the big window at the entrance of Artspace. It was a whirlwind of planning, making and final touches. We used recycled materials, paint and paper to create a Canadian Woodland theme holiday display.  It looks it's best at night when the lights under the large cartoonish tree glow, don't you think?











Friday 18 December 2015

lines

our last Artsparks lesson focussed on monotone and complimentary colours,  lines and stamping. We used bingo daubers, matching oil pastels and complimentary watercolours with black paint stamped and rolled over top.




Winter Is Coming

End of fall term is always busy. Holiday planning, shopping and celebrating takes up loads of extra time. The last week has seen my time parcelled out amongst three extra projects; small celebrations, card writing and winding up last classes and projects. 

The project below involved cutting, drawing and paper marbling using shaving foam and liquid watercolours.