Natural Born Artists

Some images from my workshop at Artzone with Charnwood Arts making sketchbook and paint from natural materials. Lots of fun, very smelly! Vinegar, beetroot and paprika don't usually end up together. Link http://flic.kr/s/aHsjyvxTAk

Lowry at Lakeside

This term I've been busy at Lakeside Arts centre running a range of workshops alongside their current Lowry exhibition. As well as running sessions with schools I've also been working with Lakeside's Gallery Art group (for 11-13 year olds) who have been creating work based on the exhibition. We started by making scrap sketchbooks which we took into the gallery to record aspects of Lowry's work. The group enjoyed this so much that we decided we would each make our own bound and stitched sketchbook for the group to draw in at home. Last week we spent the session creating observational drawings of figures. For our figurative drawing session we started off with a game designed to get the group to look carefully and then went on to make lots of quick sketches, 3 mins for each, using a range of materials such as charcoal, ink pens, paint and pastels. The group started off drawing each other's faces and then kept working until gradually they started drawing the whole figure. In groups of three we then each dressed up as characters from a Lowry painting and posed to set the scene whilst the others drew us.

The end results looked brilliant and I think you can really see the groups progression in their drawings. At the moment the Gallery Art Group is all girls, which explains the long hair and moustaches which the group drew on themselves in charcoal!

Illuminate Collective: Exhibitions- Decision Time

Yesterday's session was a day of making decisions, the first day of February and we needed to finalise design ideas. We'd spent the last few weeks working out motifs and meeting with Gallery staff to get feedback on what might work and what was possible. Ian Robinson who will be making our vinyls came in yesterday to look over our plans and help us with our final decisions. We actually made them all in record time. The decisions made were... To hand paint a mural based on a section of the below Robe, as in jacqui's designs from previous sessions. The colour of the pattern would be altered slightly so the tones match the colour scheme in the rest of the room. This would spill over into a Vinyl welcome panel.

We wanted a subtle design, a bit like a water mark to run around the edge of the exhibition space. We looked at the robe and found a detail that we thought would work.

We also picked out a couple of paint samples for the walls which we will buy and test out in the space. All in all a very productive session. The next step is to take all our plans up into the Gallery again and check they all work together.