Colouring Outside Your Mind Spring 2012 Day 3

COLLABORATION and IMAGINATION

In the third class of the Colouring Outside Your Mind workshop for adults, we began by loosening up with a fun exercise called "Exquisite Corpse."  It is a term coined by surrealist artists in the 1920’s and 1930’s to describe the process of several artists (or writers, musicians, playwrights, etc) working together on a single piece without knowing what each one was making.  The basic concept behind this technique is for one artist to begin a drawing and then to conceal what he or she is making from the other artists in the group.  The next person in succession continues the drawing using only minimal clues left behind by the first person’s drawing...

After a short strawberries and cookies break (!), the students were put to work "drawing their day"...what would your day look like if you drew it as a continuous line, without lifting your pen from the page?   These drawings were then painted with water soluble crayons.

The next exercise involved working with a partner to generate "shadow drawings," which were used later in the class as the basis for an abstract painting.

These last images show the students painting their shadow drawings, and having fun with colour and texture!

Check back in two weeks for the final installment in the Colouring Outside Your Mind workshop...

Colouring Outside Your Mind Spring 2012 Day 2

In this second session, the students learned to draw without fear!  Yes, those are indeed objects in the centre of the room, but rather than drawing them representationally, their purpose was to inspire the drawing process, to provide a starting point from which to learn a new technique or a new way of seeing.

Draw with your non-dominant hand, draw without looking at your page, draw with both hands at the same time (note: this is challenging!), draw without lifting your pencil from the page...draw, draw, draw!

 Draw a memory, draw the shapes you see after you press your hands against your eyeballs, draw with pastel, pencil, graphite, conte, pen...draw, draw, draw!

Ok, now draw those objects, but in a dissecting way, an analytical way...draw the ESSENCE of the object, not the object itself.  What are its fundamental parts, the lines or textures or shapes that describe it?

Then paint what you have drawn...keep it abstract!  And, have fun.

AfK Gallery & New Education Services Building

  

The North Shore News has put a wonderful series of photos of our new building in their photo gallery. Many thanks to Mike Wakefield for doing this. Click the photos (15) tab at the top of the image to see them all.

http://www.nsnews.com/galleries/Education+Services+Building/6549777/story.html

Colouring Outside Your Mind Spring 2012

In this four-session workshop, titled Colouring Outside Your Mind, students will have an opportunity to explore their creative side (even if they question whether or not they have one!).  Through spontaneous, playful experimentation, they will discover how to access their creative intuition, while learning techniques and skills with painting and drawing materials. 

In a non-threatening, fun environment, they will be guided through a series of progressive sessions, keeping it purely abstract, and they will emerge at the end with some great tools for creative expression.  

In Session One this week, the students got to "play" with paint, much like when they were kids...see below!  Check back weekly to see what they'll do next!

The ink and tissue paper station...

The splatter and drizzle station...

The drip station...

The "anything but a paintbrush" station...

Blowing paint through straws...so much fun!

 

Thinking Outside the Canvas Spring 2012

This Spring, Artists for Kids is hosting two more 4-session art workshops for Adults, both of them happening in the evening on Mondays (Colouring Outside Your Mind -- see next post) and Wednesdays (Thinking Outside the Canvas).

In Thinking Outside the Canvas, students will be developing and exploring ways of expressing themselves through drawing, painting, printmaking and playful experimentation.  Utilizing a photograph to inspire and inform their creative process, they will deconstruct, collect, build and express a visual narrative, while exploring various methods of idea generation, composition and art making techniques.  

 Check back weekly for updates on what the students are doing through the month of May...

Thinking Outside the Canvas Session One

Christy and Andrea having fun with gesso...

Normand, Julie and Ann studying their photos...

Geri, Launi and Dorli hard at "work"...

Julia and Ann breaking it down...

Summer Camp Registration

Registration has started for summer camp.  Please see all the information on our website at www.artists4kids.com and then either register there, or call the office at 604-903-3798.