watercolors inspired by "winter" animals

A lovely young girl had her eighth birthday party here at the studio a couple of weekends ago.

She loves watercolors and wanted to do something with animals that live in the snow. In past workshops and camps, she has gravitated towards penguins so I wasn't that surprised she chose to do an animal theme picture and winter animals to boot!

I pulled out reference for polar bears and penguins. I then had a couple of request for arctic foxes and snow bunnies. All easy request for me to fulfill.

I taped down large sheets of watercolor paper and gave the party guest time to work out their sketches on practice paper before transferring them onto the watercolor paper.

We discussed finding the shapes of the animals to begin a sketch and also how they could make artist choices to simplify their compositions from what they saw on the reference and even a bit about abstracting their animals and what that actually meant.

They then traced over their drawings with sharpie pen.

I gave a quick demonstration on some of the techniques they could utilize with the watercolors, wet on wet, scratching, salt, and blooming.

I then handed out a palette of primary colors and black.

Before they started I shared with them how they didn't have to paint their animals realistic colors, they could paint "crazy" colors that evoked feelings, temperature or was just their favorite color.

The birthday girl was using a diving polar bear for reference and she created an amazing sketch but was unhappy with her upside down polar bear, as she wasn't quite sure she wanted the bear diving underwater. Together we discussed and brainstormed all the different reasons her polar bear could be upside down.

birthday girl

And here is what she came up with, pretty fabulous.

grade 3

grade 3

These two friends used the same snow bunny for reference but I love the how interesting the compare/contrast is between the two artworks. Although the sketches are very similar the artist choices made afterwards are unique to each child. From choosing different directions for their paper, background and how they painted their rabbits.

grade 2

This arctic fox created by the youngest party goer was fun to watch. At the start, she used her watercolor paint as regular paint and had put it on thickly on one side and declared she needed more. I challenged her to see if by adding water she could get that blue paint to cover the entire paper and she was quite surprised to see that she actually could do it. She was then lost in adding more colors to the blue, trying her hand at using the water to bloom the color and of course, had a lot of fun adding salt. Her fox was a very solid blue at the end when she told me she was finished and so I handed her a bit of paper towel and asked her to find the highlights on the reference and blot them out with the papertowel. Love her use of brushstrokes around the fox to lead the viewer into her artwork.

grade 3

The simplicity of this diving penguin is in my opinion genius. I love that the young artist was brave enough to leave out the facial features even and look at the way she used her brushstrokes in the water to created a downward motion with the penguin!

grade 3

And this happy, leaping polar bear painted in pink! How sweet. Again we brainstormed a bit about what might be in the hand of that bear and she giggled at some of the ideas. No surprise this happy bear ended up holding a present while being created at a birthday party.

grade 3

grade3

And then there were these two penguins. I am so impressed at the restraint each used when using color and although these look simple, they took just as much time for the young artist to create.

At the end when it comes time to sign their names, I always give a little talk about making a mindful decision on how to add their names to the pictures. After spending an hour and half creating the pictures, we don't want the name that was written in less than thirty seconds to be the first thing the viewer notices in the artwork.  Children quickly catch onto this concept and I am always amazed at some of the creative ways they implement their names into the artwork afterwards.

Happy 8th Birthday Miss T!! Thank you for letting me share in your special day.

water based marker monoprints

These lovely monoprints were created during a warm up activity to an acrylic landscape painting project in the teen class.

A warm up exercise!

Created with the humblest of art supplies, Crayola markers and a piece of acetate.

Each teen had picked a reference photo they were considering using for the acrylic painting. They put this photograph under the acetate and then drew the elements they were thinking of including in their painting onto the acetate with the markers.

We had talked a lot about how artist are always making decisions about what to put in and take out of their paintings. What to simplify, what the focus should be and how to move things around to create an interesting composition.

This quick exercise gave each of them a chance to begin making some of those decisions without getting bogged down in getting things "just right" in a sketch.

As they were drawing with the markers onto the plastic, and any old plastic will do for this project, there was some concern that it wasn't working as the ink just kind of balled up on the surface. It was hard to convince the artist that it was OK the marker wasn't covering the surface as expected but since it was a warm up exercise there wasn't too much stressing and they continued forward.

I then gave them a piece of damp paper and they turned their ink drawing face down onto the paper and rubbed.

When they pulled the acetate up, they were all pleasantly surprised with the results.

I was too.

I thought they were so stunning that I matted all of them for the teens to take home.

Amedeo Modigliani inspired self portraits

A couple of weeks ago, Artsy.net reached out to me and asked if I would consider creating a Modigliani inspired art project.

The Tate Modern will be opening a comprehensive retrospect of Modigliani's work on November 27th, (one of my favorite places to visit) and Artsy is looking to highlight the opening while also highlighting was a great source of educational material it offers on it's website.

I personally love Artsy.net. Not only when I'm looking for comprehensive information on an artist like Modigliani but the site has also been a great resource in introducing me to an array of historical and contemporary artist to introduce to the children at my studio.

Not going to lie, it is one of the first emails I open in my inbox over coffee in the morning.

I have introduced Amedeo Modigliani in the past, once creating Modigliani inspired princesses and also Modigliani inspired self portraits.

It's been a long time since I explored this artist with children and so I was quite excited to bring him to the attention of the Kindergarten through Grade 3 afterschool class.

We spent some time debriefing his art. The children were quick to point out how long the necks were and that sometimes the eyes were left blank or even colored in.

Amedeo Modigliani. Woman with Red Hair, 1917

Amedeo Modigliani. Chaim Soutine, 1917

Amedeo Modigliani. Girl in a Green Blouse, 1917

I found all the artwork reference at Artsy.net and since I had a class of boys and girls found some subject matter of both.

As a group we went over the basic "rules" of the face and then looked at how Modigliani broke the rules. Kids love a rebel and they were quick to embrace the artwork of Modigliani.

I then brought out the mirrors and began to have the children study their own facial features. I love doing this with children as it is such a great opportunity to bolster their self confidence in complimenting each of their unique features that make them, well, them.

How the lines of their eyes and eyelids are each unique, along with the shapes of their face, the fullness of their lips, and the tips of their noses. They giggle as I take a moment to talk about how wonderful each of their own unique features are and at the same time there is great satisfaction for me as I watch each of them quietly begin to sit up a little taller as they proudly acknowledge their own interesting traits that make them special.

As they were looking at themselves, they began to use black oil pastel on grey paper to record what they saw in the mirror. They also channeled their inner "rebel" inspired by Modigliani's work and exaggerated whatever features they felt inclined to enhance.

Once finished I then handed out chalk pastels for them to use for coloring.

grade 2.

I encouraged them to create colors as unique as they are by blending two colors together. This bright and sunny artwork truly captures the sunny disposition of the child who created it. Along with the serious gaze I have seen more than once as she listens intently in class as I share artist and techniques with her.

grade 2

This little boy is a sponge. He not only listens intently to what is said in the studio, he keeps it stored away and brings it back out at the most unexpected times. Here he has not only processed what we talked about with Modigliani's art but also brought back information from a prior project studying the Fauves using color to evoke emotion. He is a very calm and laid back child and creating his self portrait using greens certainly captures his personality.

grade 1

The collar! This young girl really focused on getting it just right, along with the right shade of pink. And please note her placement of light source!! Done all on her own no less. This art teacher was duly impressed as it also extends to how she added white to the green in the background, heavier on the light source side. A choice she made after asking me what the complimentary color would be to the pink and red she chose in her shirt.

May I remind you she is grade one!

These children really enjoyed looking at Amedeo Modigliani. And I am grateful for the email Artsy.net sent me as a gentle reminder of what a great project his artwork is for inspiration with young children. Now I just need to convince my husband we need to make a quick trip across the pond to London before the retrospect closes in April......

Katherine Soucie inspired textile sculptures

This summer I had the pleasure of running summer art camps for Seymour Art Gallery. All the art projects were inspired by the exhibition on display called Regeneratus containing the textile artworks of Katherine Soucie and Michelle Sirois-Silver.

(photo Katherine Soucie)

The sculpture project was inspired by artist Katherine Soucie and the young artist worked on it throughout the week.

(photo Katherine Soucie)

Both artist were looking at how to use waste materials in an innovative way. The works all incorporated discarded materials from the manufacturing process of Soucie's clothing line and her marvelous wrapped sewing machines, Raisons D'etres, were created using waste hosiery the artist hand dyed.

photo Katherine Soucie

The children and I spent some time looking at the wrapped machines and the kids had some very interesting ideas and observations regarding why the artist created the sculptures and what happened once the discarded machines were covered in the materials and became a sculptural shape.

Using the same philosophy the artist used to create the exhibition, the campers set out on a challenge to create a sculpture out of materials defined as garbage. Starting with plastic shopping bags, each young artist created a shape for their sculptural animal. 

They were then lucky enough to be able to wrap their plastic bag creation using hosiery waste Soucie had provided the campers. Each camper started wrapping with the waste hosiery in it's original state (white).

Once they had covered the plastic bag shapes and had spent some time refining their shapes with the white hosiery, the artists began to add some of the hand dyed waste hosiery the Soucie had so generously supplied.

There was no doubt that all the children felt it was very special to be able to use the same material both artists used in the exhibition to create their artwork and were so very excited that Soucie had shared her hand dyed hosiery waste with them. It was lovely to see how this small kind act really validated the importance of each child's creative exploration.

Usually I have tested projects prior to sharing with students but in this case due to the limited amount of supply, I had to rely on my concept based on a similar project I had done in the past. I did feel that it would of been far too complicated for children to create facial features for their animals out of the fabric wrapping and so I introduced paper-mache clay.

This dried very light so I knew it would not make the sculptures top heavy. I also figured it would be easy to get a needle and thread through so that they could be sewn onto the sculpture bases like mask.

Once the clay was dry, children used watercolors and black permanent markers to add detail.

It was so interesting to see the variety of ways each child used to resolve the prompt given at the beginning of the week. For me it was rewarding to see children get lost in a task that was very time consuming, challenging at times even as the navigate through a world now based on instant gratification.

Each and every child was so proud of their final creations when finished and the project was appropriate for all ages- from 6 to high school. The finished works looked amazing when on display during the art show the gallery puts on during the last day of camp for the families.

I was quite proud of each and every child's final artwork inspired by the beautiful work of the artist in this exhibition.

acrylic paintings inspired by Monet

On the second day of the Art and Nature summer camp, my plan was to have the campers go through their sketchbooks and pick one of their sketches from our hike through Lynn Canyon and use it to create an acrylic painting.

I decided to show them the work of Monet to inspire the painting style for their work of art for a couple of reasons.

One, there is an exhibition of his work currently on display at Vancouver Art Gallery and I thought it might be a nice entry point to encourage them to go and have a look at it.

And two, Monet loved to paint outdoors.

The match of Monet's style of painting and the artist work seemed like a perfect match. It was also a perfect day to be outside and so I asked the children if they would enjoy painting in my backyard instead of in the studio.....

since Monet liked to paint in his backyard.

A resounding YES meant we taped the acrylic paper down on the cardboard I save from old paper tablets, grabbed the paintbrushes and water jugs and the box of paint and headed outside.

Now let's be clear. My backyard doesn't hold a candle to Monet's yard.

Although I have a goldfish pond, mine is in a container and definitely does not have a bridge.

I do have a small water fountain though.

And while a couple of artist decided to create paintings of the woods,

10 year old

6 year old

Most of them were quite inspired by my small water feature in the backyard.

They patiently waited to catch a glimpse of the three goldfish I have put in the pond and these fish made an appearance in several of the paintings.

11 year old

If you look closely, you'll see the white fish with the orange marking on it's head peaking out from this young boys' painted lily pad. Pretty much exactly what the fish does when you are looking for it in the pond.

10 year old

You'll also see the two orange fish along with a great rendition of the bamboo fountain in this boys' painting too!

6 year old

And then this endearing painting, where it seems my fish when night falls enjoys some flying acrobatics! This young artist had me at flying fish with this painting.

And then the waterlily paintings. I need to stress again that "my plan" was to have the kids paint forest scenes from their sketchbooks in my backyard. I had shown them Monet's work to inspire painting style along with hopefully exciting them to go take a look at his artwork in person.

NOT to paint waterlily scenes and yet something magical happened with the combination of my humble pond and looking at Monet's artwork.

11 year old

Because suddenly these beautiful water lily paintings were being created in my backyard as the kids congregated on a blanket around the pond.

5 year old

6 year old

8 year old

I think they all caught the essence of impressionist painting, my goal when I first introduced Monet. But what happened in my backyard that day came as a complete surprise to me as children began to bring me their finished works of art as we packed up to head back into the studio.

8 year old

I did have one young boy who had grander ideas about the best way to spend a beautiful Vancouver summer day other than in my backyard. I have to agree a day at spent on the shores of the Pacific Ocean would be marvelous.

But until then, I am quite content with the day I spent with these talented young artist sitting in my backyard painting.