ART CLUB | Day 3: Monster Mash-Up!

Stephanie Chan March 20, 2016

This was a fun one. We did a bunch of playful "letting go" exercises for this class, encouraging kids to relinquish creative control and be open to the ideas of others to produce collaborative pieces. What better theme than MONSTERS to to really amp up the colourful and crazy nature of these exercises. Our inspirational book was Peter McCarty's The Monster Returns. We started out with trifold monsters, everyone drawing the head, passing onto the next person to do the body and again for the legs, WITHOUT PEEKING! We moved back to colour and shapes, asking each person to draw any sort of shape before passing it onto the next person who would then draw a monster inspired by the colour and shape presented to them. It gave the kids a chance to see how their work could inspire others, discover different perspectives and share one another's imagination.

I had them paint a variety of shapes and colours which were then cut out and mixed up in a big bowl. Random handfuls were then redistributed to the kids to create a monster using the shapes they were given!

This was definitely a really really fun day for everyone! Looking forward to seeing the monsters that are created this coming week!

ART CLUB | Day 2: ISH Lines

Stephanie Chan March 17, 2016

Man. Art Club is kicking my butt into Organization Land. The prep and cleaning on top of family life and the other projects and photos I have is insane but seeing the piles of work that are being created and the great feedback I am getting from both the kids and parents once the madness dissipates has been worth all the effort. Not to mention, my house has been cleaner than ever! Serious bonus points there!

Day 2. We focused on LINE with inspiration drawn from the book ISH! The goal was to break away from creating "perfect" or "correct" renditions of a drawing, but to focus on the "feeling" or the "essence" of the object being drawn. We focused on mark-making: soft vs hard, short vs long, large vs small movements, and round vs jagged lines. We started off with charcoal, closing our eyes and letting our hands "dance" to the beat and swells of a variety of music. I pulled songs from one of my favourite albums, The Royal Tenenbaums, starting of with the slow gentle rhythm of"These Days" by Nico, switching it up to "Jackie is a Punk" by The Ramones, and then taking it down just a little with the playful "Police and Thieves" by The Clash. They loved it, of course. We assessed our drawings and they requested one last song. The girls pleaded for Let It Go and the boys groaned in ___. Luckily, someone piped up with Rock'n'Roll and they all cheered for that. So "I Love Rock'n'Roll" it was... CLICK HERE for the Instagram Video of them in action!

We did a bunch more projects with pastels to integrate what we learned about colour the previous day. The projects required me to be 100% hands on (especially getting these hands decent!) and was unable to document beyond this small bunch of photos!

Stay Tuned for Wednesday's MONSTER COLLAB day...

ART CLUB | Day 1: Colour Theory

Stephanie Chan March 15, 2016

As with any job I take on, no matter how big or small, my Motherhood anxiety kicks in and i procrastinate by stuffing my face or scrolling through my FB/IG feed. I'm not sure why I was having anxiety over leading kids through an art project but it was there. Day 1 was a success and I am now super stoked for Day 2, no anxiety. So, because I had my hands full, this post looks more like photos of my house as opposed to photos of the kids in action. That said, I think it turned out to be a pretty sweet environment for the kids to work in, especially considering it's my dining room. I made my first trip to Welk's back in January, and one of the purchases I made was an art card collection of one of my favourite artists/topographists: Jessica Hische. It's been on the backburner to have a set of the Alphabet framed for the hallway but it just hasn't happened yet. I have also had this giant blank canvas sitting on our wall for probably almost 6 months. These two potential projects came together perfectly as the backdrop and display board for this Art Club class! HA!

Day 1 would focus on basic Colour Theory. What better book to start with than Peter Reynold's THE DOT. If you haven't read this book, pick it up. We've had it for a few year's now and it continues to be an inspirational favourite. And if you have read THE DOT, then you can probably guess which book is hiding under it... FIND OUT TOMORROW!

Can I just say that after a year of living in our little ranchero, I am finally falling in love with what is happening!!! I LOVE IT. I had 2 girlfriends over for a Birthday Breakfast and asked Kevin to throw on some Velvet Underground on the record player. When I saw that he had put the sleeve up on the shelf with Andy's Banana I wet my pants a little. This is now the designated record spot. It has changed since then, but what better record cover than this for Art Club, right??? SWOON. That's Chloe's self-portrait from the portrait painting session I led last month for Eve's birthday party. And those super rad fantastic crazy animals are the ones from Mexico that I said I never wanted to show anyone. I went back to Welk's last week and bought a bunch of mini succulents for these new little shelves. The cute bowl beside the record was part of a pair, the other pair being the one that Chloe accidentally broke in the store and therefor we had to buy them.

Alright, enough of my gloating, onto the nitty gritty. The kids blew my mind. I designed a simple Colour Wheel template the night before because I only work at the 13th hour. I was surprised when nobody knew what it was and had never done one before and then I realized I had never had my kids do one either. THEY were surprised to find out that I had painted the entire wheel using nothing but the Primary Colours. We began with Primary, of course, then moved onto Secondary. PIECE OF CAKE.

Tertiaries proved to be more challenging as they had to mix the Secondary Colours a total of 3 times. Everyone needed a little assistance with a colour here and there, and everyone took turns holding out their brushes asking me "IS THIS THE RIGHT COLOUR!!! IS THIS OK?!!!" I was impressed with their perseverance, nobody gave up, and there wasn't a single complaint.

Inspired by THE DOT, I had them move onto a few projects that required more mixing: Painting a GIANT dot in their favourite colour, painting different sized dots in different colours to represent each person in their family, painting a dot by not painting a dot (negative space), and then painting a dot party!

Each class ends with a button making project where they use what they have learned that day to make a button to take home, sort of like a badge! I'll try to take more photos during tomorrow's class, hopefully it's a sunnier day!

The Pauhaus presents: ART CLUB!

Stephanie Chan March 10, 2016

there are a lot of things in motion here at The Pauhaus! i've got a plate full of delicious projects for the next couple of months and i couldn't be more excited. first things first, i will be hosting a trial run of Art Classes for kids ages 4-6 over Spring Break. i love diving into arts, crafts and creative things in general with kids because they are blank slates, they haven't had rules slammed into their heads that can often dampen free expression and the openness to make mistakes and just keep going. week 1 is officially FULL with 6 more spots available for March 21-25 (including Good Friday). Visit ART CLUB for the details on the class and register now!

Throwback Thursday: Quilling

Stephanie Chan February 18, 2016

I've had these photo held up here in a Draft since April 6 2014. Having jumped back on the quilling train this past week after a few fallow years, I figured this was the perfect time to resurrect this post.

I was drawn to quilling after stumbling across the work of Yulia Brodskaya on PInterest. We did a few single initials for birthday gifts and this full name for Chloe's first birthday back in 2011. We kept this for a long time, I think we must have finally parted with it last year, all the letters except the O which I'm pretty sure was Kevin's contribution. Being the more meticulous one who also happens to enjoy pin-striping as one of his many hobbies, he has taken over the quilling projects. I choose the font and the paper colours and leave him to do the majority of the work. When areas of contention come in to play, I contribute potential solutions. We are a good team. Here are a few documented photos of the CHLOE prior to its disassembly and discard.

I'm so glad I took photos of this before tossing the C, H, L, and E. We currently have the O framed and hung in the kids' room. When I told Emily that we had tossed the other letters, her eyes rolled out of her skull:

EVEN THE "E"??!!!!!!!…..

Her daughter's name is Eve. My girlfriend Caela also freaked out because she wanted the C. We definitely could have done a better job, and have done better ones since, but it was the first one we made so, you know… It's pretty obvious how different and thoughtful Kevin's "O" is from the rest of the letters I did with nothing but curlicues. Anyway, Eve just had her 5th birthday this weekend and I've decided that Kevin needs to get back on the quilling train. What better way to get the quilling juices flowing than to do one for one of our very best friends!

So, first things first: Shooting these guys dead on is not the way to show them off, but it's gotta be done. They are meant to be admired from multiple angles to really get the full effect. I love how his decision to create a scene with the white background: the sun, the leaf, the waves down below and the beautiful bird. The bird was initially without beak detail or the legs, those were my contribution - ATHANKYOU - and I just can't get over how perfectly the bird blends into the background but totally stands out once you notice it. I think one of the next pieces definitely needs to be some sort of jungle foliage with a few colourful birds in a similar style. So pretty.

More to come in the next few months!