shrinky dink medallions

On the last day of camp for "Faniful Frolics" at North Vancouver Arts Council, I created a quick project to fill up some time.  I did not think much of it when planning it, other than I knew every kid loves the magic of Shrinky Dinks, the clean up would be minimal and results instantaneous with no drying time involved.

What a shock it was to learn what a meaningful project it was through the children's eyes.

Each child created a medallion to wear either as a token of their imaginary world or a protection medallion to use while visiting their imaginary world.

They created a picture of something that symbolized their world and then used a black sharpie and colored pencil on the Shrinky Dink paper.

Then my 18 year old daughter, who helps me at the camp, cut a large hole in each of them with an Xacto knife, since we discovered the hole punch shrunk too small to get a piece of yarn through it.

As I expected, the kids LOVED watching their work shrink in the oven. You could not help but smile as the squeals of delight filled the room. 

Thankfully they all finished creating their works at different times, so we could shrink the work in small groups that made the process very manageable.

And here is where the project took on a meaning that I could not of predicted in a million years.

As I began to put the medallions around the children's necks, I flippantly started "knighting" them.

"I place this medallion around the neck of "M" in honor of all the creative work she did this week showing us the magical world on the seashore. With this medallion, she is now an honorary citizen of Seashore World where she can spend her days swimming with goldfish".

The other children's eyes widened in delight. 

The student's chest swelled as I put the medallion around her neck and spoke about her hard work, successes, and what I was most proud of what she accomplished during the week.  

And the other kids could not wait for their turn to be "knighted".

There was such a pride in each of them as I spoke while placing the medallion around their neck.  I quickly realized I could validate all the hard work, the moments during the week where they learned to keep going through difficulties or had done a particularly good job at problem solving, great attitudes, and all those other life skills you really want your kids to carry forward into adulthood. Not to mention the fact I could really compliment the beautiful artworks they had created!

Who knew a very simple, end of the day camp project could be so significant?

What started off as flippant wasn't so flippant after all and a good reminder to not forget what we say to children can have significant impact.

I'm going to guess for a lot of the kids, this turned out to be their favorite project of the week.

I know it quickly became one of mine.

7 year old,  Woodland Fairy World

6 year old, sea anemone from Underwater World

7 year old, Martian Creature from Outer Space

6 year old, Underwater World

6 year old, Goldfish from the Seashore

6 year old, cat from Fairy World

8 year old, Bat Cat from Cave World

6 year old,  Sea Snail from Underwater World

8 year old, Seahorse from Underwater World

7 year old, Fish/urchin/mermaid from Underwater World

Self portraits repeat

Did I mention how excited I was to finally purchase mirrors for my studio?

So excited I figured every.single. class. needed to use them in the first week and so here are some self portraits created by the Thursday afternoon class with oil pastels.

Again, we talked about how their self portraits didn't need to look "exactly like them" but could just capture the personality of them.   

In my own artwork, I have been focusing on self portrait and I would just like to say that drawing yourself IS HARD!  I had forgotten what a challenge it can really be to look at yourself and then try to put the essence of your being on paper. 

And so during the process of my students doing self portraits, if I see any of them begin to get too bogged down in trying to create themselves, I will give them an out and tell them that it is OK for it to be "just a portrait of someone".   Usually what I find is that when the pressure is gone to "create me", they usually end up with a portrait of "me".

And for some in this class, this is what happened.  

I thought the girls all ended up with lovely work.

7 year old

7 year old

8 year old

October Owls

The Monday afternoon art class started off the year focusing on owls.

It is October after all.

I went to the library and pulled a lot of reference books on owls for them to mull over and then they started by creating sculptures.

elf owl, 7 year old

I love the elf owl.  The owl itself is just about life size.  For those who don't know (i.e. me before the artist starting telling me all about this species), this owl is very small and lives inside of cacti.  I love that this little boy did not worry about making the cactus actual size but put one in to represent the owls environment only.

barn owl, 10 year old

Oh these eyes!  How could you deny this little fellow anything?  So stinking cute.

11 year old

And finally the artist who after looking at all the books, took the bits and pieces she liked and created an owl out of her imagination.  Love the nest she decided to place the barn owl in too.

Once they finished their sculptures, I gave them an opportunity to paint their owls in acrylic.

elf owl, 7 year old

I expected the cactus to make another appearance, but love that the artist decided to focus in on the owl itself in this picture.  I wouldn't mess with him.  He may be small, but he is mighty.

barn owl, 10 year old

I love the simplicity of this work.  She did such a wonderful job keeping the lines and details to a minimum, which has a wonderful effect on the work.

11 year old

I have learned to trust implicitly this artist vision.  She usually takes a left turn after I introduce the project and although I can't always connect the dots as she is explaining her ideas, when left alone she creates surprising and amazing work.  I would of not thought to put a sunset with the owl, but I think it works wonderfully!  I love the moon up high starting to make an appearance in the sky too.

I don't have to wonder hoo had fun creating this work, from the amount of laughter in the room it was evident all of them had a good time.

Sugar Skulls and teaching moments

School year classes started at Kudzu in the beginning of October, not that you would know it from the lack of posting on my part.  It was due to a calamity of errors on my part that needed fixing by my better half, husband, who was in Hong Kong the past three weeks for work.

Which seemed to mostly consist of sending my pictures of the protest two blocks from his hotel to turn my head grey, but that's another story.

The Wednesday class began with creating Sugar Skulls out of clay.  I brought out a couple of skulls for them to look at for reference and off they went.  While they were creating their skulls, I told them a bit about the holiday that takes place in Mexico and what a wonderful way it is to remember loved ones who have passed away. 

When they were finished, I pulled out sharpie pens, acrylic paints and glitter glue for them to use to decorate their work.  As time ran out, I had pulled out some crepe paper for them to make flowers to glue on also and promised the girls we put the flowers on at next week's class.

Here is how a couple of skulls looked at the end of class that day.

Although it is a little hard to tell in the above skull, both of these students chose to use glitter glue in the eye sockets.  I thought it looked quite marvelous.

Unfortunately when I came back to the studio the next afternoon to teach, gravity had played a part in their creations and the glue that was once in the sockets, now ran down the face.

7 year old

Unexpected, yes!  Ruined, no!  At least not as far as I was concerned, I thought it turned out quite interesting and I knew this particular student would more than likely LOVE the results.

And when she arrived at class that next week, her response was just as I expected - a huge grin and a exclamation of "cool!"

7 year old

I was not quite as confident in regards to the other little girls' response and she was definitely unsure at first.  I think it helped that her friend was so enthusiastic about the changes, but for her, the skull was suppose to be happy...not sad.   So we talked about all the times people cry "happy tears", which then seemed to make everything OK.  

From my perspective, she wasn't so much as upset that the glue had ran but wrestling with how that interpreted into what she was wanting to convey in her sculpture.  Once she realized that people do in fact sometimes cry when they are extremely happy, she had no problems with gravity getting involved in the fun.

8 year old

Their other friend who also used the glitter glue a little less enthusiastically had no problems with gravity and so we took a minute to talk about why the glue ran on some and not others.  Without help, they all surmised  the glue had been applied to thickly. 

And so through the process, they learned.  I'm sure they will come back to this moment in the future when applying paint, glue, or other materials and remember the time when they applied things to thickly and they ran down the work over time. I believe even the student who did not have issues with running glue will also file the results away to utilize at a later date.

Most importantly, they learned to embrace the unexpected.  One of those great life lessons we all need when navigating through this world because as all adults know, you have a plan and then sometimes life has another plan. 

A lesson these students passed with flying colors while creating their sugar skulls.

going with the flow

 I always come into the studio with a plan for the day when working with children, but I have also learned to let that plan change depending on the mood of the kids or the direction their own creativity brings into the mix.

On Friday, the last day of art camp, I had planned to introduce the Impressionistic painting style using some of the sketches the students created a couple of days earlier on our mountain hike.

But then a family showed up with a beautiful arrangement of sunflowers for me!  I was so touched and my plan for the day immediately changed.

I would share both Impressionistic and Post Impressionistic painters with the students, a bit of Van Gogh and a bit of Monet.  

I'm a firm believer in the importance of children understanding the technique behind the work, not just the work of art.  And so we spent some time looking at a series of paintings created by the artist and discussing what they noticed about the paint strokes and techniques on the art.  We then focused in on how they could recreate the brush strokes in the paintings we observed and how to blend color directly on the paper, instead of on the palette.

I reinforced that each of their strokes would be unique to them.  I also did not give them a water bowl to clean off their brushes, instead asking them that once they had a color on their brush to "wipe it off" by using that color in all areas of their painting they thought it applied.

They were only given primary colors, some white, black, and brown.  

And finally I gave them a bit of molding paste, to create some of the thick paint strokes they noticed in Van Gogh's work.

I then took the sunflowers and placed them on a white table cloth, a table cloth you will not see in one of the artworks, with a few apples and a pear.  I told them it was "artist choice" as to how much or how little they used to compose their work. 

11 year old

8 year old

11 year old

11 year old

7 year old

10 year old

Below is the artwork of two seven year olds who are the best of friends.  They finished early so I gave them another piece of paper to paint whatever they liked, mostly because Ms. M was not all that impressed with the painting style of Van Gogh and Monet.  I'm guessing if it was up to her, Van Gogh might still of only sold one painting....  However she forged ahead and gave the style a try.  I think they both came up with very cute pieces the first time around.

7 year old

unimpressed 7 year old

But what tickled me the most, although I didn't say anything to them, was that when allowed to paint whatever they wanted in reward to at least giving the above style a try...they both seemed to maybe subconsciously like painting in this style more than they might of let on because as you can see, it still carries a lot of the qualities of Van Gogh.

7 year old

7 year old

It was all I could do to keep my instinctive mommy "I told you so" comment to myself, but it did bring a smile to my face to see quite possibly a little bit of Van Gogh's starry night find it's way into their apple paintings.  Absolutely no prompting from me and they were given free reign to paint anything their hearts desired and yet this is what they did, too funny.  

I love that although the students were all looking at the same still life and working in the same style, the paintings are all extremely unique to the individual who painted them.  I dare say several of the students will be utilizing this style in their artwork in the future and that is what is so great about introducing an artist with the intent of teaching a style technique, not a recreation of their artwork.

And most importantly,  I am incredibly grateful for the beautiful sunflowers that inspired this project and the fact it reinforces to me the importance that I continue to be open to "going with the flow" when working in my studio.

Here's what some kids do when there's a school strike...

They make miniature acrylic paintings.  I think the students were surprised to learn they take just as long to create as larger paintings!!

grade 7

grade 3

grade 3

grade 3

grade 3 (same artist as above, even smaller canvas!)

grade 3

grade 1, that's a night sky filled with lightening

grade 7

grade 3

Oh. Mr. Pickles "baby" also made an appearance.  You might remember this artist created the Mr. Pickle bust during a summer camp at North Vancouver Community Arts Council where I taught.  That's the miniature painting as a backdrop just to give you an idea of how small he really is.

the original Mr. Pickle

They used color pencil on scratched up vinyl records. I love introducing unexpected surfaces to create artwork and these were really fun for the students.  WHAT!?!!  We're drawing on records?

Ariel, grade 7

Side "B" of Ariel

Grade 7, abstract

Side "B" of abstract

grade 3, she drew her most favorite works from the day

grade 3

grade 1

They created dye paintings too!

grade 7

grade 3

grade 3

grade 3

grade 7

grade 3

grade 1

And then in honor of what should of been the first week of school, they created pencil holders.  However that quickly evolved into super size pencils and other interesting subject matter.

grade 3

grade 7

how clever is this?

grade 3, "doughnut family"

grade 3, coil pot pencil holder

grade 1, coil pot pencil holder

grade 3

grade 7, coil pot pencil holder

And then they created apples!  I love using sandpaper with oil pastels.  At first the kids thought this was really weird, but I think they were quite pleased with the results.

With all that artwork, there was still time for fun in the arcade room and snacks from the popcorn machine!  I always call the day a resounding success when the kids groan that the day is over and in unison say they are not ready to go home.

Here's hoping school is back in session next week, but if not, there are still a few spaces left in next week's camp.  Monday-Friday from 9am until 4pm.  $250.00 with a 20% discount for additional siblings.  Includes all art supplies and taxes.  If the response to today's camp is any indication, it's going to be a very fun week!  Call 604-971-1147 to join.