Thank You! and Flyer

Thank you! to our Artists for very fun and creative ArtClub sessions ~ and Thank you! Parents and Friends for coming to our shows.
(Please see below for AfterSchool and March Break info and please check back soon for updated posts and pictures...!)

Our next AfterSchool Studios start March 26th and 27th.  
Tuesday's ArtClub (gr. 3-6) will work in groups on their own ANIMATION using drawing/painting, modelling and sculpture, digital cameras and the computer.  
An extra day (Tuesday, April 7th), if needed, will be available for final editing/titling and posting to youtube!
3 spots available.
$130. for 6 weeks
3:45 - 5:30
Pick up at Tom Thomson

Wednesday's ArtClub (gr. 1-3) will explore and create using various media both through self-directed efforts and technique-based projects. We are entering Springtime again, so we can use our ideas about the natural world, the weather, change, growth and shelter...(and small creatures, tornadoes and imaginary friends!) to help us explore and create. 
4 spots available.
$135. for 6 weeks
3:45 - 5:30
Pick up at Tom Thomson

MARCH BREAK 2013 ArtClub Flyer

March 19th: Thank you for a fun 2 days!

Feb. 28 ... Space is filling up - so excited!!  We have 2-3 spots left for Monday(Max.) and 4 spots left for Tuesday. Let me know if you can join us by email at: ArtClub@freshorange.ca

Some of you have asked about March Break Camp...

Art is Drama! Two-day studio for all ages:

Monday & Tuesday  March 11-12th.

$90. for both days

$48  per day

$25  half day mornings -  but the whole day will be more fun!

9-4 pm with before and after care($6). 

In the mornings we will make character masks and create character sculptures out of plaster bandage, paint, feathers, ribbon, streamers and whatever else we find! In the afternoons we will create mini-marionettes using clay sculpture, paint, cardboard and string.  There will be time for seriously silly play-acting, drama games and a show as well!  Krystii, our very own dramatic artist, will help lead in all the fun!

Older children will have lots of opportunity to invent, create, write, direct and help stage short performances.

Minimum of 3 children.

Email or call Sylvie(905-639-8545) if interested.

Happy Family Day Weekend!

If people are really interested, we can add Wednesday ~ just let me know!

ArtClub Tuesday - Drawing to realize ideas: Week Four

Today we worked on looking at negative spaces and gesture drawing.

We started with a fun group drawing 'exchange' where 2 of us posed while two of us tried to catch the poses in quick, loopy, gestural sketches - keeping in mind that while the page was quick and sketchy technique building, it was(is) also a composition, so we can take some care and give consideration to this each round in starting the next sketch. After a few rounds we could work into our sheet or start a new sheet. The randomness of the poses, and having so many laid out on the pages made for fun and energetic compositions. After that, most everyone had an urge to create something in a contour format so we tried to create the negative spaces between the branches of our ArtClub tree, or anything in the room that was interesting to us. We looked again at Emily Carr and Henry Moore and talked about the ideas of negative and positive space, and ways of representing space as a volume with mass and contour.

We could then use washes to enhance what we had done - creating some lovely work, and a proto-type for a time-capsule out of found materials.

For the next two weeks we will be creating our own composition, on paper or canvas, using charcoal, crayon, paint and collage that expresses the idea of concave or convex.  We are going to use the ways we know of conveying mass, volume, gesture and contour.  We can consider all the artists works we looked at for 'permission' to try something in our own work. You can work from observation, or from imagination.

ArtClub Tuesday - Drawing to realize ideas: Week Three

We started with a spiral drawing exercise inspired by an exercise from AccessArt UK  and our recurring interest in representing portals. This is an awesome and inspiring resource for teaching artmaking techniques and artful thinking through drawing and making ~ a VERY USEFUL RESOURCE.
We used our spirals as a quick drawing 'icebreaker', working from the centre of the page out to the edge of a shared sheet and back twice more, in black or white pastels. Then, as much or as little as we wanted for 2 minutes, we 'spiraled' with different colours. Our spirals became the ground for a contrasting work in paint and (some) paper collage. 

This work was ephemeral for some of us, as we built on and worked over previous efforts, while for others is was very decisive and deliberate work. We will cut, hang and talk about these in two weeks.

As we worked we talked about figure and ground. We set up our palettes and worked on our spirals with expressive marks - continuing with a feeling generated from creating our spirals, or creating patterns that contrasted with our ground in line quality, intent, or colour. There was acrylic, pastel, markers, finger scratching and torn paper available as well as different sized circle templates(lids) to trace if we wanted.

You all did a great job with a very open-ended prompt for exploration ~ thank you! 

Art Club Tuesday - Drawing to realize ideas: Week Two

We looked at some Artists you suggested.
We looked at Andy Warhol's work, found at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA and Sister Corita's work, examples found at the Corita Art Center in Hollywood, CA.  Graphical excitement.
We looked at images of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, William Morris, Annie Pootoogook,  Emilly Carr and Henry Moore, and images of the sword props and a film poster from The Hobbit (Peter Jackson-Director, Simon Bright-Supervising Art Director). A wide array of influences for our exploration.

We talked out a mental map of connections between the works by connecting their relationships to line, form, and ways of conveying detail, and then decided to draw using anything from these artworks for inspiration.We created random doodle images as a base using ink, pastel, and marker. This led us into some finished doodles, some new geometric work and some ideas for our sketchbooks.

ArtClub Tuesday - Drawing to realize ideas: Week One

We char coaled, then we erased.

We talked about Emily Carr and looked at some of her work and the ways she drew and painted skies, trees, and totems of the Pacific West Coast First Nations -  then we looked at how she painted the space in between the skies, trees and the totems.

I think we are relating the representations of ground and depth to our actions on the page.  Charcoal seems to work well for this because of the immediacy it provides us - across modes of working out a representation.

February PA Day Fun! Tornados, Negative space and frozen relics

Thanks to everyone, and special guests, for joining us on the PA Day.  We had fun creating books...

making papier mache hearts, painting tornado spirals,

 painting while thinking a bit about negative space...

creating ice sculptures with balloons, water, pom-poms, red hearts and our very cold day... and taking care of Rusty!

Thank you for a busy and colourful day!

ArtClub AfterSchool January 2013 Flyer

Please join us in January  ~ RSVP Sylvie at 905-639-8545

On January 9th and 16th we have open studio available for those who want to drop-in: 

3:45 to 5:30 - p/up from Tom Thomson
$23. each studio(All-Ages Welcome!)

Jan 9th:Draw and Paint Demo's - cross hatching, jitter drawing, splatter painting, watercolour smudges & happy accidents to explore.

Jan 16th: Draw and Make Shadow Puppets character(s) or a mask then share in a performance!
Please see the ArtClub Winter session schedule below.

Central and St. John's: Ask about us at your school!
Central High School students: receive volunteer hours for helping out. Please call Sylvie at 905-639-8545

Tuesday's ArtClub (gr.3-6):
We will start again on Tuesday, January 22nd.
3:45to 5:30-p/up from Tom Thomson to walk to the studio

For this next session you can each choose an artist you'd like to investigate. Each week we will explore a different artist's techniques and process and look at how we can connect these to our own artmaking as we paint, draw, make, collaborate, perform and share!
$130/6 weeks

 

Wednesday's ArtClub Jr.(gr.1-3):   

We will start a new session on Wednesday,January23rd.
3:45to 5:30-p/up from Tom Thomson to walk to the studio

For this next 6 week session we will learn about the work of artists Henry Moore and Emily Carr as we explore our own ideas using drawing, painting and clay.
$140/6 weeks

10% discount for sibling registration

Ask me about sponsorship and scholarship opportunities.

Happy Holiday!

A quick note to say we will be having an all day ArtClub
***on Wednesday. Dec. 19th.***

 

We did a great job with our Beaver sticks. We explored, and layered, first with
Transparent water colour, then Translucent tissue collage,  and finally Opaque acrylic
paint and jewels, as we painted and embellished our Beaver Sticks. Great work everyone!
I'll post our pictures shortly to share our work.  

Thank you to our very talented Artists for all their creative efforts and constructive sharing--I had a lot of fun working with each of you and was very inspired by your ideas, collaborations, explorations and the exciting work and presentations that came from that.

Happy Holiday and The Very Best Wishes for the New Year!

Tuesday's ArtClub:  We will start again on Tuesday, January 15^th. 

For this next session we will each choose an artist we like, to investigate, for a 6 week effort using our own ideas, inventiveness and creative skills to paint, draw, construct, write, illustrate and/or perform!

Wednesday's ArtClub Jr. :  We will start again on Wednesday, January 9^th  with rolling registration through the month of January. 

Our 6-week session will officially begin on January 23^rd, 2013.  For this next session we will learn about the work of artists Henry Moore and Emily Carr as we continue to express and explore our own creativity and skills in artmaking.

Artclub S2 wk3 - Beaver Stick Contour Rendering

We started by looking at our Beavers Sticks one more time before we work directly on them.

Our exercise was to follow the contours of the sticks with our 'china marker', starting at one edge of the page and ending at the other without lifting our markers. After we did one, we could do another from another position or different focus. I had brand new crayons(yup, crayola--too fun to resist), and brand new oil pastels to share so that we could explore different ways we might like to add colour, paint, mark, decorate or inscribe our sticks once we work on them...we did this as we explored different ways to mark and inscribe our drawings.

We talked about the idea of planning and building up ideas before starting in on the actual materials we might want to use as artists, because materials can be scarce, special and can be expensive, and so sketching, exercises and art explorations, while also works of art in themselves, help us realize our ideas more richly and in leading ways through our more ...let's say refined, work.

Then we sewed, setting out to create elements of our comic/graphic stories that we're working on. And we learned a lot about planning ahead through this as we cut our fabric and researched online and tried to imagine how to construct our plushies. We are simply creating forms with features, using felt and stitching.

Fun and lovely drawings.
Sylvie
(pics to follow!!)

Artclub Jr. S2 Wk3 Distinction and Care

This time we did the blind contour exercise using paper bags. Some of you were so cute reaching into the bag to find ...NOTHING!!  This was a more traditional blind contour exercise: we put our hands and china markers INTO the bag and had to draw something from the room without looking into our drawing bags.We did one object, flipped our bags over to do another, then ripped our bags, carefully, to reveal our efforts! Once we all figured out how to do the exercise, we had better effort but some of us were still a little suspicious of the process!!

We also chose our beaver sticks. We will be thinking about homes and places to live as we consider how to and if we even want to, paint and add to these already artful and naturally beautiful beaver sculptures.

We also discussed the idea of "taking care" as artists, how we do that with materials and ideas in our working, and also by taking care of our materials and tools in general.

 For our group painting this week, we each added some kind of creature to last week's painting but we drew them with my very fine charcoal pastels. Some of you very carefully explored colours within your own drawing, trying to relate your work to the painting underneath by using bright or contrasting colours, while others took care to select a colour they really liked, to try it against the background. All of us realized we needed some contrast for things to be seen. We also explored outlining here to help revela our drawings - to make them distinct, if we wanted to.

Artclub S2 wk2 Contour and Beaver Sticks

We are continuing on our comical works!  Some of us have decided to continue collaborating while others are going to work independently.  We can ask each other what we liked most, and found most challenging, of both processes at the end of the session.

We have lots of felt, embroidery floss and stuffing to work with. We are taking turns in "The Lab" to write and brainstorm with our partners, or on our own. There is still much drawing and writing left to do as we work out our ideas for our comic panels.

Our drawing exercise this week was traditional Blind Contour, using that paper plate and pencil contraption to remind us not to look at our drawing and to instead just look at the forms we are trying to draw and trust in our drawing hand. It can be hard to let go of what you think you KNOW about what you see and to just let your hand draw. Contour drawings, as we discussed,  are the OUTLINES of a the surface of something or someone. It is as if you are tracing along the edges of the form. Contour lines, for me, define the shape, the form and meaningful details of a thing--they are not shaded but for example, trace the shapes of shadows, colours and textures, to help define what you see in a form in outline. I think that is a little less traditional and may even be more gesture drawing...but I like things in contexts!

Generally, contour drawing exercises help us to translate what we see onto  our page using only outlines. As an exercise, they help our eyes and hands work together well, and build skills in acting on what we see through drawing.

Pics to follow!!

ArtClub S2 Wk 1 - Decisions & Directions

We've  started our next session with an awesome donation of beaver sticks(Thank you Brian and L.!!) which we are excited to imagine and create with.

We started today with quick drawing exercises. We are doing these every week to get us in a zone: this week was a play on "blind contour" drawing:

We had our hands feel objects in paper bags so that our hands, not our eyes, could tell us what to draw. This was challenging because right away we wanted to peak - something about wanting to "get it right". Once we were all clear this was not about our visual accuracy in depicting an actual object but more about feeling our way through, we made more confident marks, and could even listen better to what our hands were telling us.

We used charcoal, conte crayon, and brown craft paper - which helps us take up  a variety of techniques working out from light/white and dark/black marks. Our mylar, and even trace is nice for this as well.

After we each did 2-3 objects we looked into our bags to evaluate what we'd done - most of you felt strongly that it was important to get a resemblance, but were okay discovering and inferring the resemblance from what you'd drawn. There was still a sense that to 'get it right' meant 'guess the actual object' too. I think it was a challenging way to think about drawing - sort of taking things apart - and you met the challenge well!

We decided to work on comic books this session. We talked about ideas and decided to include soft sculpture elements and some individual and collaborative painting/drawing/collage works to exhibit with our comics.  As we worked we re-visited examples of soft sculpture works and researched "Plushies" which have a craft AND comic book element to them.

Some of you started to sew right away while storyboarding, and others went into "The Lab" to start by writing and storyboarding.  Great start and helpful too to plan for he materials we'll need for next time.

Sylvie
Pics to follow!!

ArtClub Jr. S2 Wk 1

This session we are working on the same warm up exercises as the big kids: this week we did Reverse Blind Contour drawings(objects in a bag). We weren't really sure what the exercise was at first, I think, and the objects were just so curious so we were all peeking ALOT.  We thought about our one hand as trying to trace the forms of the objects so our other hand could draw them and reveal a form - trying to see with our hands, we started to draw with purpose. We did this in pairs to collaborate on the page and we used charcoal, conte crayon and china marker on brown kraft too-like the big kids. We had a lot of fun revealing our objects afterwards and evaluating where and how they resembled what they actually were.

I am thinking about how the younger children worked differently than the big kids. The younger kids could readily un-think the 'problem' of what's in the bag into a challenge of describing the shapes with their drawings and then guessing what that might be afterwards. The big kids challenge was more about how to let go of what they already knew was in the bag through inference, and to really just listen only to what their hands were telling them. In both cases the challenge was met to quite literally feel our way into drawing.

We also worked on our group painting and started to make paper bag puppets or draw in our sketchbooks, or on mylar. Some of you continued to draw with the charcoal and conte, others switched to pencils and marker. And we looked at and arranged our beaver sticks.

An interesting thing happened this studio. One of you started doing a "Kick-Me" sign for their puppet, then others joined in with "Hit-Me!" and "Punch-Me Hard!" signs too. This started a very reasonable conversation about what we would do if we saw somebody with a sign like that on their back (Thanks Heather!)--which quickly prompted questions about what it might mean to be kind, and a framing of our concerns by realizing that standing up for others, is standing up for ourselves as kind and thoughtful people.  Some of us then put a sign on Mr. Potato Head because we wanted to take a picture of him as if he were getting punched.  It's important to realize no one wanted anyone to really get punched but for some reason really liked the idea of it in a photo - that it maybe reminded us of something we'd seen, or thought it was funny because it was not happening us! Which is something to think about. We also talked briefly about slapstick comedy: pies in the face and slipping on banana peels, and why that makes some of us laugh, and others cringe. It's a spectrum.

Busy and mindful studio!

Exhibitions and Presentations

We had a fun evening sharing our work with family and friends.

It was so rewarding to see the big kids "presentate" to the little ones with humour and charm too.

Thanks for a fun session of scheming, making. and sharing!

Sylvie
(some pics to follow)

ArtClub Jr. Abstract Halloween Fun

 

Very abstract and invested efforts! We formed smaller groups to collaborate on painting. We discussed abstraction and 'Halloween' ideas.

 

Very conceptual and spontaneous use of found materials and photography... prompted by all the caramel wrappers we used for our caramel apples. I will make sure to have the camera out as a shared studio tool. 

We planned for a busy Halloween Studio that included facepainting. Everyone worked well independently and inventively!! 

 

I was recently talking with some teachers about a watercolour masking project they enjoyed doing with an artist in their classroom, which made me think that framing through masking while thinking about a 'where' might connect nicely to 'how' we are thinking about  found objects that are animals and plastic. 

We each took on the challenge differently: making connections through shadow tracings, drawing from life, through colour, and enjoying the surprise when we removed our masks, or left our mask on and re-painted our "frames" while working artfully back into your work. We thought about where, in abstract and real ways, we might find our animal creations as a prompt. Busy afternoon!

 

All this while painting our faces for the Trick-or-Treating we like to do each year:) - (Face pics will be posted on my website: www.freshorange.ca/ACParents once I set up a password protected page)~thx.

 

Happy Haunting!