Dana Irving Inspired Chalk Pastels

Another day, another British Columbian artist.

This time a current working artist from the 'hood!  North Vancouver's own Dana Irving!

And the kids loved the fact that she wasn't dead.

I kid you not.

The students are quite fascinated that there are actually working artist living in today's world. When you think about it, it makes sense. For the most part when we introduce artist to children, they are in fact, dead.

So on top of being alive and from North Vancouver, the cherry on top was the way Dana Irving herself describes her work, "Emily Carr meets Dr. Seuss"

The kids were fans before I even showed the first picture.

You can take a look at her work here, http://www.danairving.com

I'm sure you'll become big fans too.

After looking at several of her artworks, I began to ask the kids to discuss what they noticed about her work and they were all too eager to shout out lots of different things that they saw. I had brought in landscape and tree reference for the students to use and they began to sketch out their compositions inspired by her work.

Below are the amazing creations they came up with using chalk pastel. It's easy to forget how young these kids are and I'm constantly amazed at all of their talent and courage to delve into new ways to create.

northern lights, 9 year old

8 year old

cherry trees, 7 year old

6 year old

7 year old

7 year old

Guess which two artist are friends?  Although they both did rainbow ground, I love that each composition is so different while still sharing "BFF" status with the same rainbow ground.

9 year old

I liked that the artist below pulled what she had learned in school while studying Emily Carr into her piece. They must of gone over some of Emily Carr's compositions because she was quite proud to share with me her knowledge on what she had learned while drawing a prior artwork inspired by Emily Carr, which she also implemented into this work.

9 year old

7 year old

kindergarten

6 year old

7 year old

8 year old,  koi pond at park

We were all a hot mess of color when finished and I silently thanked whoever it was who invented soap because boy did each and everyone of us need it.  The kids had a lot of fun creating these works and were thrilled with the results. 

I think even more thrilled than when they learned Dana Irving was not dead.  I hope if she ever happens across this post, she enjoys the work she inspired even half as much as the kids did creating it.

A quick add on to this post 

The students at the "Meet the Neighbors" camp held at Kudzu Studio also completed this project on Friday.  Again, they too had a lot of love for  Dana Irving's work. 

9 year old

9 year old

The artwork below was created by a student who is part of my weekly classes too.  A few weeks ago she created a Dana Irving inspired piece using dye and collage. I think it is interesting what she changed and added to this piece after doing a previous study.

10 year old

previous work of above student, dye and collage