Drawing like a child

I'm teaching an adult class on "art fundamentals" - things like line, colour, shape etc. It is an interesting exercise for me because my contrary nature makes me not want to follow the "rules". Last night's session was on shape. This was a particularly difficult one for me. I've actively avoided thinking about the basic shapes of objects for most of my life, and I know exactly why.

When I was a child, someone (yes, I do remember who it was) gave me a book about drawing birds. The book had step by step instructions for drawing a variety of birds. Each drawing started with a basic egg shape and built from there. I tried to follow the directions. I really did, but laying down those basic shapes sucked all the joy out of drawing for me. I tossed the book aside, and kept drawing my own way. However, somewhere deep down inside, I believed that one day, (when I became a "grown up"), I would understand how to do things in a logical, systematic way, instead of in my own random, childish, juvenile way. Well, perhaps I didn't quite use those words at the time - I was only 8 after all, but nevertheless, that's what I thought for a very long time.

In one of her books, Lynda Barry (look her up if you don't know her work) writes about how kids draw simply for the joy of making lines on a page, they don't worry about what the lines look like, or what they will become, they just draw. She says that for many of us, at some point that all changes, and we start to worry about whether or not our drawings look any good, and the "two questions" that take over. The two questions are "is it good?" and "does it suck?" I feel like teaching adults to draw is really about teaching them to forget about the two questions.

Here's some of the art that people did yesterday. I'm really excited at how they turned out.

Before the adult class, I had two children's classes. We read a book called "A Perfect Square" by Michael Hill, and then made art from a "perfect square" of origami paper. I liked the activity enough that I used it in the adult class as well. Here's a peek. The top row are by 3-4 year olds, the middle row by 5-7 year old and the bottom row by grown-ups.

The invasion of the giant bugs

Earlier this summer I was asked to teach a summer camp session making giant papier mache bugs. It was a blast, and all the bugs that the kids made looked amazing.

Here's a peek at a few of them:

I wanted to make more, so I gathered the Muckabout Kids (and a few grown ups too) to make some that we could exhibit all together.

All the bugs were exhibited at the 2017 Living Room Art in the Heights event. They were everywhere, flying from the ceiling, hanging from the walls, crawling around a cage. As a happy accident, there were several bug themed videos playing in one of the rooms where our bugs were displayed.

Feed the chickens, weave some cloth, catch a fish, or something like that.

A potter friend of mine asked if  I could weave a table runner to coordinate with a dinner set that she was planning to make for an upcoming show. She said she wanted lots of texture, trailing bits and loose threads.

I managed to almost immediately break the sample bowl that she gave me, because that's what happens when you try to carry an armload of yarn, a warping board, and a little ceramic bowl all at the same time. Nonetheless, I thought the warp looked great with the shards of the bowl.

So there I was weaving along, thinking about the beach, using lots of blue/green and turquoise yarns, with some hits of putty and even pink. I was enjoying how the table runner was turning out, when suddenly, I decided that it needed to become a circle scarf. I had left lots of warp at the beginning, thinking it would become an extra long fringe, so when I got near the end of the warp, I unwound it and wove it in as weft. 

Here's the finished scarf with the "warp becomes weft" bit showing at the bottom. 

And here's the table setting:

Oh, and the title of this post. I know you are wondering. That's the title that the potter chose for this piece, at least it was something like that.

Giant bugs

I'll be teaching a couple of weeks of summer camp at Place des Arts this summer. I think I mainly agreed to do it because the theme is papier mache bugs - and how could anyone not want to make giant papier mache bugs? Here are the samples that I've made.

At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted to teach art to kids, but I've come to realize that I enjoy coming up with project ideas and making the samples for myself. Seeing the kids enjoy the creative process is an added bonus. I especially love how the art they make looks nothing like my samples.

Vancouver Mini Maker Faire this weekend.

The Vancouver Mini Maker Faire is a popular annual outing in our house. It's one of those rare things that every family member is actually enthusiastic about attending. If you've never been, I'd highly recommend it. It is not at all like a regular craft fair with vendors selling their stuff. While there are usually some things for sale, the maker faire is all about people showing off the stuff they like to make. There are all kinds of weird and wonderful things there. It's a hard thing to describe. You just have to go see for yourself.

I'll be there this Saturday doing a Junk Journalling workshop 11:45-1:45pm

The registration details are here: http://vancouver.makerfaire.com/workshops/

Kid's art

I've been teaching lots of kid's art classes recently. I didn't plan to, but it just sort of fell into my lap. I really love how fearless children are with art materials. They just take whatever supplies happen to be lying around that start making things.

Drawing on the white board is very popular with one of my classes. This is the message that one of my young students decided to share.

Conformity

My daughter recently did an "artist apprenticeship" for her high school work experience. The group decided to create artwork with the theme "conformity". Most of the students did drawings or paintings. One person created a welded metal dress, called "The Cage". This is the weaving my daughter did as her contribution to the exhibit. All the artwork is on display at the MacGill branch of the Burnaby Public Library until the end of May.