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.

inspired by Basquiat

During the "Studying Under the Masters" art camp, I wanted to highlight some of the artists currently on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery's Mash-Up exhibit. VAG has been working on the exhibit for over 3 years and it is a spectacular collection of modern art from 1912 to current day. My hope is that by presenting some of the artists to the kids, they will be enticed to see the show and have a personal connection to some of the works after creating pieces inspired by them.

We all know kids respond well to Warhol and Haring, both artist have works in the show, but I was trying hard to introduce artist that were a little less known to the kids and I felt Jean-Michel Basquiat would not only resonate having been working at the same time as the other two artist, but might be an artist the kids had not known before. (he also has a work on display at Mash-Up)

Basquiat self portrait, "Untitled, 1982)

The above work is predicted to bring in over forty million dollars at a May auction by Christie's!  Forty million dollars, wow.

I am probably drawn to this period of modern art because I was in my late teens/early twenties when it was being created. This work and the counter culture that inspired it was intriguing and inspiring to me as a young artist trying to find my way in the world.

While presenting works created by Basquiat to the kids, I also explained other art movements that were new and unusual at the time- Hip Hop/Rap and graffiti. It is hard for the kids to grasp that these were things many people in mainstream  society did not understand nor embrace,  as they are now a part of everyday life for them, but to me it was important to highlight what else was happening in society when presenting the work of Haring or Basquiat so they can fully understand why the artists were driven to create the work they did.

Creating an age appropriate soundtrack of early Hip Hop for the kids to listen to while they looked at Basquiat's work, to understand the inspiration for the rhythm of his work, was more challenging than I expected but I did it and some of the kids had a hard time staying in their seats while Run DMC and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince filled the studio.

9 year old

I pointed out some of the messages Basquiat put into his work and asked the kids to point out some of the images they saw within the pieces that they were drawn too. Then they began their own artworks inspired by Basquiat's art.

They started by covering a very large piece of watercolor paper with pastel in colors of their choice. They then went over the entire paper with white paint while listening to the playlist of Hip Hop I had put together from Basquiat's era. I asked them to let the paintbrush "dance" to the music.

Then we put the artworks aside to dry and worked on a different project.

11 year old

The next morning, using black paint the kids created image shapes and pattern while once again listening to the music. I asked them to think about a message they would want to share with the viewer and for those children who didn't want to do a message, to figure out their own images inspired by the images they remembered from Basquiat's work.

10 year old

Again we put the paintings aside to dry once they were happy with the black acrylic paint they had added to their paintings.

7 year old

8 year old

Finally I brought out oil pastels and asked the kids to go back into their black images and add details inspired by the works created by Basquiat. They could also add words or anything else they wanted too.

8 year old

It was interesting to watch how each child interacted with this style of painting. Some wanted to find order within the work while others embraced chaos and went for it.

7 year old

I simply love the works created by the kids but then I'm a huge fan of Basquiat's art, although from the looks of the Christie's auction coming up, I will never have the opportunity to own one. 

10 year old

I'm not sure all the parents will gravitate to this particular project when going through all the artwork their child created during the week, but in the words of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, "parents just don't understand".

adult mixed media workshop

I did my first adult workshop in the studio!

Five women registered for the workshop over two evening sessions.

It was so much fun to share some interesting techniques I have picked up along the way with like minded women.

And who can argue with students who show up with wine instead of juice boxes?

The first two hour session, I helped them build up a multi-media background.

They used vintage papers, acrylics, stamping, oil and chalk pastel, plus inks.  By the end of the night, they were works of art just by themselves.

The second two hour session, the women worked on their main subject matter. Some used image transfer and then painted and drew over the top and others used a variety of acrylic paint, including soft, fluid, and high flow, and water based pencils.

By the end of the night, they all had stunning results.

I had a great time getting to know them all and hopefully they had some fun too. A couple of the women's children were in the morning camps that week and they were so proud of their mothers!  It was so sweet to see them so excited that their moms were also going to art class and sharing their love of creating.

This Thursday evening I will be hosting another adult workshop in the studio on Watercolor. This time it is only one two hour session, from 7-9pm, but I am sure it will be just as much fun.  I am so looking forward to the night.

There are two spots left in the workshop and you can get in touch with me through Kudzustudio.com to register.