ART CLUB | Week 2 Wrap-Up!

I learned a lot over the 2 week stint of our Art Club.  Made tweaks and took a lot of notes as I went along.  I know I am too hard on myself, but I gotta keep those standards up there!  Everyone had a great time and there were many parents who requested Summer classes through person, text and email, so it seems like I'm not going to have a choice.  This is good.

Anyway, just a quick bunch of photos from Week 2!

THANK YOU to the ladies that encouraged NAY pushed me to set-up these classes.  A special Thank You to the many moms who have been there over the last few years with my photography, for supporting me yet again on this new path.  I am so lucky to be part of a community of amazing women!  And a very warm Thank You to the new moms that I have met for joining in on a fruitful and fun experience!  I truly had a great time with the variety of creative minds and hands, I really loved being able to recognize their different strengths and wiggle them out of their comfort zones.  Looking forward to seeing familiar faces come summer time!

THANK YOU!!!!! 
xoxoxo

ART CLUB | Day 4 + 5: Stamps, Patterns, Mixed-Media

Day 4 was a flop.  There had to be one flopper and it was ok because we bounced back on Day 5.  Also, the kids didn't realize anything was wrong as they still had a great time, but it was definitely good for us to discuss how things sometimes go awry and when they do, you push forward.

Day 4 we worked with a bunch of homemade DIY stamps to create fixed and organic patterns.  We moved on with our book, one of my absolute top favourites: Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett and illustrator extraordinaire Jon Klassen.  It's really the most lovely marriage of story and pictures.  Our stamp exercises moved over to printmaking where we cut out shirts from burlap and printed them through a rolling press to emulate the yarn pattern that was used throughout Extra Yarn.  The kids created self-portraits with their printed shirt and made their Day 4 buttons before moving onto the next project.

The next project was inspired by Oliver Jeffers' STUCK.  We integrated stamp/printmaking with bubblewrap to create our own tree and used pastels to illustrate, cut out, and paste all the ludicrous objects ...

Dev here was super into his buttons.  He may very well have the best set of them all as well because of this.  Week 1 was great and it felt good to have that first taste of what I would be dealing with for future classes.  I have had nothing but positive feedback from the kids via their parents which is really encouraging, and requests to host classes for younger kids and adult sessions!  Much to plan ahead for the summer months!

xo

 

ART CLUB | Day 3: Monster Mash-Up!

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!

 

xo

 

ART CLUB | Day 2: ISH Lines

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...

 

XO