watercolour wonder

'Golden and red trees, nod to the soft breeze, as it whispers, 'winter is near'...A Fall Song (Ellen Robina Field)

water...watercolour paint needs lots of water...inspiring the children to grab what they might find around the home, coffee filters and newspaper. With a few tubes of primary colour and a little basic colour theory, they are on their way to blending colours!
Our inspiration last thursday involved leaf litter and glorious autumnal colour! Children learned about composition, background and foreground as they built up their collages with watercolour leaves, fabric and felt leaves and the odd ant + leaf-litter creature! Environmental artist, Andy Goldsworthy again and watercolour artist, Joseph Turner were our Great Artist inspiration:

'Spades take up leaves, no better than spoons, and bags full of leaves are as light as balloons'.... Gathering Leaves (Robert Frost)

Leaves! lesson preparation

...INSPIRE the imagination through the work of Great Artists....
..GROW knowledge through the use of age-appropriate art theory...

Just thought I would share some of the preparation that goes into the classes we design for your children! I am working on the 'Leaves' workshop at the moment and thoroughly enjoying putting together the vocabularly and inspiration that undergirds each lesson.
Some of the concepts the children will learn and we will practice and discuss are below:
Texture: the actual way a piece of artwork feels or looks like it should feel when touched.
Composition: the arrangement of the parts of a picture
Contrast: the use of opposites together, dark and light colours, rough and smooth textures.
Pattern: a repeated design or sequence
Blending: using two colours to make another ie. red + yellow = orange. Introducing the colour wheel.
Our inspiration is by ANDY GOLDSWORTHY a favourate artist who works primarily outdoors with nature. (born 1956) a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland, who creates site-specific sculptures in both rural and urban settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects to create both temporary and permanent sculptures that draw out the character of their environment.

:: Work by Andy Goldsworthy

SCHOOL HOLIDAY W'SHOP A: Leaves glorious Leaves!

The first of the school holiday workshops!
Autumn + Winter are the seasons to celebrate our leaf fall! There are so many beautiful colours, textures and shapes to be found and a whole ecosystem relies on this fall to weather out the chill of winter!
Inspired by the book 'leaf litter' and the beautiful diversity of our leaf fall here in Australia, children will explore WATERCOLOUR + COLLAGE techniques to represent varing leaf forms and tonal colours. They will then cut out their creations and work on a collage composition using their leaves + fabric and felt to add texture!
Our dates have only just been released for these workshops and already they are booking fast! BOOK NOW as places are limited!