Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Lawren Harris inspired acrylics and skateboarding fun

The last day of the "Hello Vancouver" camp was a lot of fun.

First I needed to create another acrylic painting project because I had one artist who needed to finish her acrylic painting of Vancouver that was started earlier in the week. She had a lovely work started of the Lion's Gate Bridge but the sailboat had become the bane of her existence. I was so proud of her for continuing to work through her frustrations with the piece that I wanted to make sure she didn't feel stressed to finish because she was worried about missing out on a project using something completely different and fun. I knew if she felt the others were creating an acrylic too, she would continue to feel part of the group and be able to relax and work through her current project.

And she did. Isn't her final work lovely?


So while she finished her acrylic inspired by the city of Vancouver, I had the other artist create a second acrylic inspired by an artist from Vancouver - Lawren Harris. And since they had already completed a painting of the landscape of Vancouver, I gave them the choice of picking a work that they really liked that Harris had painted or using some reference material from our city. They created some lovely works of art and did all the color mixing for these paintings by themselves using only primary colors, burnt umber, black and white.

10 year old

8 year old

8 year old

8 year old

They all finished about the same time and we had about 45 minutes left in the day. The night before I had seen a video from a children's art studio in Russia that got me completely excited. I knew the kids in the camp would love recreating the idea and the "Hello Vancouver" camp was the perfect venue.

Vancouver is known for its' outdoor recreational activities. The studio itself is nestled into some of the best mountain biking trails in North America. We have local ski hills that entertain us in the winter with snowshoeing, skiing and snowboarding and in the summertime with trail hiking. You'll find us sailboating in the harbor, biking on the seawall, and a litany of other fun things around and about town.

So to create a final collaborative project based on the city's love of the outdoors seemed perfect, so using a skateboard to stand in for a snowboard, I introduced the last project of the day.

I explained what collaborative artwork meant and that we would be doing an abstract piece together using different mark making materials. I had the kids break into pairs and gave each 'team' a pencil to start.

I rolled out a large piece of paper I had created before camp started and taped it to the floor, then brought out a skateboard. You should of seen their eyes bug out of their heads, what in the world were we doing with a skateboard?! I told them we were going to pretend it was a snowboard and create an abstract work inspired by enjoying our local ski hills.


Each camper chose a spot on the paper to place the skateboard and then laid across the skateboard on their stomach holding a mark making tool in each hand. Their partner held onto their legs and pushed them back and forth across the paper.


The kids could choose from simple drawing pencils, charcoal, pastels and anything else I could think of that would make marks. The kids embraced this project with the enthusiasm I had imagined when I first saw it being done in Russia, they were so excited.

As they were creating the piece, I would have them stop long enough to discuss as a group what they felt the work needed and then whose ever turn it was would work on that need. When finished, I gave each child a pair of scissors to cut a part of the paper to take home. A souvenir to remember the fun week they had shared with new friends, created by all their new friends together as a group. 



Here's a very short clip of some of the fun they had, unfortunately it is not longer because I didn't want their faces identifiable for their own safety on the internet, an almost impossible feat when they were having this much fun. There is no sound for the same reason as they continuously were calling out to each other in all the excitement as to what they should do next.

Needless to say, it was a great end to the week. And although I'm not sure the parents' will understand the importance to that simple cut piece of paper, I know each child left happy to have a small part of this collaborative work to remember the fun they had on the last day of camp.





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