In The Paint

In January I made a New Years’ Resolution that I would fill up my sketchbook. Every page. I don’t think I’ve filled a sketchbook since high school. I made this resolution out loud and in front of my Grade 7 students. I was encouraging them to use their sketchbooks more to plan, experiment, and sketch in. I’ve been using mine as sketchbook/journal. I am more than half way through the book and through the year.

Lately I’ve been thinking about photo-transfers. Next week at art camp I’ll be teaching 11-15 year olds Digital Photography and we’ll be doing a lot of collage and mixed media involving photo-transfers.

This first one uses two methods. For the image of the sale boats I used Golden’s Super Loaded Matte Medium and the transfer only takes about three minutes. And for the skyline I did a packing tape transfer that my friend Stephanie taught me. Thanks Stephanie!!

This sketchbook page is about my day at the Toronto Islands watching the Dragon Boat Races.

Here are a couple more sketchbook pages:

That’s my photo buddy aka my brother. I got the idea for a faux photobooth picture from a journaling book I bought on sale at Indigo.

The pears started as an acrylic still life demo for my adult painting class and was later cut up and added to the sketchbook.

This spring I took a portrait photography course one of the colleges in the city. Our first couple of assignments used natural lighting and after that we got to get into the studio and light up some models. It was a great time using the lights and backdrops, and we had some great models!

Here is one of my favourite shots that I took during the class.

Here is a painting that I did recently. Last year my husband and I travelled to Fergus and Elora, Ontario for a weekend getaway and I took plenty of pictures and am only now getting to paint from them.

For this one I loved the colours in the sky and the yellow in the landscape. These small paintings are so much fun!

Well after a year of teaching grades 7 and 8 Art, I’m now back at art camp with the 8-10 year olds. We finished a week of sculpture and did a few challenging projects that turned out really great in the end. I didn’t get too many photos of the work because my hands were busy sewing or gluing up until home-time on Friday. Here’s a picture of our balsa foam robot and fabric bird.

I bought the book “Countyside Softies” by Amy Adams and was inspired to try sewing with this group of campers.

It was more challenging than I anticipated and that was after I modified the instructions, fabric, and stitches, to suit the age group. But I might just be crazy enough to do it again later in the summer because the kids loved it and they turned out great!

This year for March Break Camp the theme was Pop Art. We looked at classic Andy Warhol silkscreens of Marilyn Monroe and at some recent works by Douglas Coupland based on the Warhol images and came up with these works of art.

Silk screen tote bag by 9 year old camper

Acrylic silhouette collage by 11 year old camper

Silk screen on acrylic wash by 12 year old camper

Silk screen on acrylic wash by 8 year old camper

Acrylic 3D collage

This past fall session of my Saturday classes, the students spent a day on photography. We were very lucky last session with great weather and were able to outside to sketch take photos on more than one day. The students in this class are between 11 and 15 years old.

Click on image to see full photo.

The final week of summer camp has passed; the clean-up is complete and I’ve had a week to relax before I have to think about my adult classes that begin in the fall.
The last week my 8-10 year olds focussed on landscapes. We did painting, printmaking, and photography, and went outside to do some sketching. The kids really focussed on their first painting which was an acrylic on masonite board after Tom Thomson. After the ground was covered with a burnt orange, the kids were restricted to using only a palette knife.
Here are a couple of results:

The next piece that the group did was an acrylic on canvas after artist Dorothy Knowles. I was attempting to get the kids to understand the different paint applications that artists use. While Tom Thomson applied the paint in thick short brush strokes, Dorothy Knowles layers washes.
Here are two of the final pieces:

This week my group of 8 to 10 year olds focussed on sculpture. We used paper clay, papiér maché, and plasticene for various projects. However, my favourite project was making monsters out of air dry clay. The monsters turned out great! Here are some monsters before and after they were painted with acrylic paint:

We continued the Time Machine course through week 5 of camp. I had a great group of kids these last two weeks and they created some wonderful pieces.

On the Time Machine theme, we visited different time periods through the magic of PowerPoint. To travel through time we would use a different Time Machine each time. I started the PowerPoint with an image and the kids had to guess either the name of the time machine or the book/tv show/movie that it is from. For example, the “time turner” from Harry Potter, or the “Delorian” from Back To The Future. If a camper got it right, they would receive a prize at the end of the week.

We traveled to the Northern Renaissance and visited Albrecht Dürer; to the 19th century and looked at Cezanne’s work; to the Ancient Greece theatre and were inspired by their theatre masks; and to the 20th century to see Modigliani’s portraits.  Here are some of the results:

Softolium Prints inspired by Dürer's woodcuts.

Cezanne Still Life

Cezanne Landscapes

Modigliani Self Portraits

Masks

I was sick for most of week 3 so I’m skipping to week 4.
This past week and this week we have been travelling through time visiting different art periods. The first stop on our trip was the 1940s Quebec. We looked at the group of artist known as Les Automatistes led by Paul-Emile Borduas and then created our own automatic paintings. The first group of paintings were created with solucryl. The campers started with sponging the paint on. Then they used palette knives. The next steps were using straws to blow the paint around, schpritz bottles to spray the paint on, and finally dripping the paint on from paint brushes.
The second group of paintings are very small acrylics on scraps of canvas paper. The kids finger painted it on.

Stay tuned for more Time Machine art work…