Party Time

Every once in a while I'm asked to teach for a birthday party at Artspace. These can be huge affairs with ten plus children* excited to be together and rowdy and boisterous full of creative energy. They can also be a calm and gentle oasis (right up until the cake is consumed) full of creative energy. Did you see what I did there? Regardless of how many kids are at an art party that creative energy is there and it's brilliant to be a part of.
*or sometimes even less than ten kids; it's rare but it happens and this weekend was one of those small affairs

Artspace offers a few different options for visual art parties, Clay Creations, Painting and Drawing and Mixed Media Creations. Within those options we as instructors get to tailor create a lesson suited to the birthday honouree. Sometimes it's a specific theme; How to Train Your Dragon, Princesses, ponies... Other times the theme is wonderfully open and non specific; like the birthday I taught last weekend. When I met the VIP on a quick walk through and tour of Artspace a few days after booking her party I had the pleasure of being able to ask her myself what theme she wanted her party to be created around. Without hesitation I was told, "flowers" with a small caveat; there would be boys at the party so maybe they could create blue flowers for boys?'

I never shy away from knocking down gender specific bricks when the opportunity rears it's head. I was quick to exclaim that flowers are not just a girl thing or a boy thing and that I could come up with a project that would suit everyone. And with a little collaboration with the artist/administrator at Artspace I think we did.


 Whenever possible we like to use recycled materials for party projects, these made use of take out food containers (pizza boxes used for transporting sandwiches for my eldest child's hot lunch program) and egg cartons.

Every piece made by the party participants made use of the same materials. All of them look completely different and amazing.

Dragons and Sunflowers for Swords

Last year the Art Sparks and Arts Enrichment classes did a project based on Perfect Square; the book I read with my Art Exploration Students on Saturday.

I make an effort to keep lesson topics fresh and to revisit techniques instead of subjects so instead of continuing with the same book for today and tomorrow's lesson I introduced The Sunflower Sword by Mark Sperring and illustrated by  Miriam Latimer. I built a Dragon Themed birthday party around this book last year which was a big hit. Today I focused on the spread in the book that had the dragon flying over top of a giant field of blooming sunflowers.

In my garden I have a lovely patch of sunflowers this year. The bright yellow petals surrounding the smaller blossoms set out in a Fibonacci spiral are beautiful in and of themselves. Adding a dragon to the composition is a full on winner with my own little artists as well as the artists in my classes.

We started with an application of yellow and orange paint with sponges and also foam shaped stamps. I then instructed my artists to add the brown centres of the flowers with a round brush. The opportunity to bled the brown paint provided with the still wet oranges and yellows was taken by a handful of artists in the lesson and the brush work they used added energy  and interest to their compositions. A few other artists were more interested in precise application of the brown and others were more interested in applying the yellow and orange and only a small amount or no brown was added at all. Our next step was to use scissors and painted paper scraps to cut out the shapes to build our own dragon. The dragon was glued onto our under painting and a final addition of a googly eye ( or three, or five or two) was added.

Regardless of what steps were taken or left out in the process each of my young artist friends learned a little bit about texture, pattern and shapes today. It is always really fascinating to see the ideas of children this age emerge onto paper.

Once the finished works are dry I will post some examples.

Friday Book Round Up

This week I referenced two books for my balloon painting lessons. 

I'm a very big fan of Peter H Reynolds' books for their art inspiration. His illustrations remind me strongly of Illustrator Quentin Blake of Dr Seuss Great Day for Up! fame. But it's not just nostalgia for one of my favourite books as a kid that I like. It's the stories that he tells in his books and how they promote being creative, thinking outside the box and being an artist. I have added three books from Mr Reynolds' bibliography to my own book collection. I've mentioned that I don't often buy books unless I really love them and these certainly fit that criteria. Rose's garden isn't in that bunch yet. I ran across this book while researching for this weeks lesson and as soon as I saw it was a Reynolds' put a hold on that baby. I was not disappointed. 

In addition to loving Reynolds Ehlert is another go to favourite author illustrator for both bedtime reading with my children and for art lesson inspiration. my kids often pick up a Lois Elhert (both illustrated and authored and illustrated) book from the library as one of their free choices. Her cut paper shapes and the bright colours lend themselves to preschool and toddler art lessons especially because the shapes she cuts are both engaging and simple. One of my favourite Elhert title is Hands: Growing up To Be An Artist which is an artwork in itself. 

If you're interested in either of these books click on the image of the book and find yourself at Biblio.com an independent book selling website or visit your local indie bookseller and buy your copy from a real living breathing person. Also feel free to visit Amazon.ca (or.com)to find the book you're looking for.By preference I try to buy from independent book sellers but I  also know that sometimes convenience and price are better if you have a tight budget.

Still Life

My Tuesday afternoon Painting and Drawing class has student's aged 5 and older. This means that the style and skill of the artists in that class varies all along the spectrum of art skills for children. 

I should preface this post with an apology for not getting a photograph of the still life set up I had for this class. The time between set up and beginning of class is a bit of a crunch and Time got away from me. I set up boxes of varying height covered in draped fabric, Two glass jars with cut flowers, a pair of beautifully embroidered and beaded purple shoes and an assortment of fossils, minerals and crystals. I am really kicking myself for not thinking to document it until after getting home last night, it looked fabulous. 

To start with, we talked about lights and shadow and how they form shapes on the objects that we draw. We looked at examples of still life drawings and discussed how using light and shadow to create form inside a drawing also creates space within the drawing adding dimension. We also talked about looking at our subject and our drawing at the same time as we draw so that our eyes and our hands work together. 

Each student, dependant on time drew with charcoal on white paper focusing on shadows. They then drew with white chalk on black paper focusing on highlights and then finished on coloured paper using both the chalk and charcoal incorporating both highlights and shadows.

As you can see from the drawings I chose to display from the lesson, each artist's style is completely different; as is the way that they chose to look at and draw the subject. The older of the artists in the class focused on more detail, really looking at the still life and how the light and shadows worked within the composition. Some artists chose to interpret the still life into their own style of drawing and the younger artists were still able to capture the idea of what was in front of them with their emerging skill set. 

I chose my favourites from the finished drawings to display. 

More Flowers and Balloons

Just like last week I kept Monday and Tuesday lessons pretty similar. Since our Tuesday students are a little older and have a longer lesson than Monday, I added a few changes to extend the lesson. We started the lesson with a reading of the picture book Rose's Garden by Peter H Reynolds. I decided on a different book for this group because it was a little more involved than yesterdays while still keeping within the same theme.

My little artist's started their project by learning how to hold and cut with scissors; this is a skill we will revisit again and again with this age group. It's always a tricky lesson for me to teach and for the little ones to learn but it's very important for later when the same grip is used for holding a pencil. each child was given a piece of construction paper with a teapot shape pre-drawn on it. Following the instructions for holding and using their scissors each child cut out their own teapot. Every teapot is unique to the artist who cut it out. Some were given a little help by myself or my co-teacher, howeverthat number was considerably less than I anticipated. Given that the class size is quite big we did quite well with our cutting. We decorated our teapots with white glue and fine glitter and set them aside to dry.

We used balloons to create our flowers again filling our whole page with balloon impressions. Once our pages were covered in flowers we glued our teapot on top referencing the final illustration in Rose's Garden where the heroine's giant teapot sits as if floating on a sea of colourful flowers.

Week Two: Zinnia's and Balloons

It's week two and I'm anticipating the joys of balloon painting with my young artists. The cold I caught from one of my preschoolers has left me with a drippy nose and a scratchy voice. I didn't help this when I stayed out a little later than usual yesterday to see the lunar eclipse but it was worth it.

The technique I taught today and tomorrow is one I found on Pinterest and immediately tweaked. It has a big "wow" factor with the young ones and lends itself really well to certain subjects; flowers for instance. The Pin I first saw this technique used in was a take on Eric Carle's Hungry Caterpillar.  I love Eric Carle, some of my favourite projects are created with painted paper and collage. I think his paper collages are very distinctive and wanted to try something different in my own classes so I came up with a theme that I thought suited the technique even better and allowed for a little discussion about colour theory and of course the use of a varied and interesting colour palette.

Last week we collaged and painted leaves; very suitable for autumn. This week I'm bringing in some of the zinnia blossoms from my garden and blowing up balloons for the students to paint with. This lesson works best with a contrasty selection of paint in each tray and I do find that I have to impress the importance of not squeezing the balloons while painting to the students (otherwise: POP). I also find that it's a good idea to have a few extra balloons ready just in case. I have a hand pump to blow them up before the lesson begins. While we are on the subject I also try to blow the balloons up at most about 1/2 the capacity. This makes them easier for small hands to grasp, easier for transport inside the studio and also makes them less likely to pop. I have in the past used water balloons for this lesson with good success but the smaller balloons are also thinner and more likely to pop unexpectedly.

My co-teacher for the Artsparks class read the book Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehert to our young artists and their caregivers and then once a short break had been taken and snacks consumed my class joined me in the art studio. Gree paint was used for grass and stems and then I had my young artists stamp their balloons into the marbled paint and then onto the paper. the wow factor happens when they see the colours transferred from the balloon onto the paper. The excitement from the ballon painting was felt throughout Artspace. As a final step white glue was applied to pre-drawn styrofoam stamps and a dusting of fine glitter was added to the tacky butterflies, caterpillars and bees wchich got this lesson a super double wow ovation.

When I left after clean up the art was still drying. Once it's hung I will follow up with images of the student's art.

The Really wonderful thing about this class is that all the caregivers are very open to letting their children, grandchildren and friends explore the materials in their own way. Of course there are small nudges here and there to remind our small artists what was said in the demonstration but the final work is always very much the work of our little artists.

 I use balloons for paper mache projects at Artspace as well a painting tool. Usually I save paper mache for week long camp lessons so that there is enough time to add a good number of layers. If you use balloons in your lessons let me know how they work out; if you have tried something different please share.