Calligraphy Birds & Beasts with Wynn Yarrow

 

Calligraphy Birds & Bests

First Friday Art Club in November explored the Victorian era folk art of calligraphy animals.  Guest instructor Wynn Yarrow led this program and started the introduction with a Powerpoint presentation.

Sweeping Lines

Students were advised to pay attention to the sweeping lines of each image in the presentation.  There were swirly marks and swishy marks similar to cursive writing.  Some students noted that the marks looked like the Nike symbol.  Wynn handed out inspiration packets, which had printed animal silhouettes .  These silhouettes were easy to trace over blank sheet of paper and create personalized beasts. 

Cats & Dogs

Images of cats and dogs started popping up all over the conference room.  After an image was chosen, it was up to each student to personalize the drawings with the swirly lines we saw in the Powerpoint presentation.  

How do you draw a Peacock?

Students were also welcome to select books from the library collection to help draw a specific animal. Birds were this artist's fancy.

Modern Mouse

It was apparent that some kids had a vision they needed to accomplish.   
This student was fond of a mouse and became fully engaged in decorating her creature with significant calligraphic marks.

I enjoy watching younger students develop their skills.  Drawing is that special skill that everyone struggles with because they always compare with another artist they feel has more talent.  Wynn Yarrow does not allow this comparison in her classes.  There is consistent reassurance that imagery developed by an artist's hands at that moment is the highest skill and best they can do.  "Comparing is not the key to success, just an indication of where we might wish to go."

Monkey Trouble

As birds and beasts were developed in the class, students also learned how to 

create banners with Victorian era proverbs.  Using handouts for inspiration, 

Maggie used her own name to label her drawing.  

The Dragon

The youngest artist in this class finally discovered the joy of drawing.  

Something about this lesson resonated with Alex.  Here he is drawing a Chinese dragon.  When he finished, he boasted, "I feel I have the potential to be an artist!"

Giraffe on Safari

This Giraffe was another success story of the afternoon.  There were several attempts to get that silhouette just right, but Roni forced herself to make it happen without any help.  

Using a library book as reference, she tested patterns on separate paper before utilizing them in her design.  The giraffe's spot are so impressive!

Let me draw RIGHT MEOW!

Having a guest instructor gives me an opportunity to take pictures and record quotes from the students.  There was even enough time for me to draw and test out my own skills.  I had fun trying several styles within the same cat silhouette.

This wraps up another year of First Friday Art Club.  

We host a Make & Bake Gifts program in December in place of Teen Cooking Club and First Friday Art Club.  Space is limited, so sign up today to secure your place to create beautiful and delicious gifts for friends and family this holiday season.

Goodies for the Holidays!

Thanks for visiting.  See you in December!

xo,

Erica

   

harp & heART with Maryalice Little

Maryalice Little is a harpist who has been training as a certified clinical musician with Harp for Healing.  She inquired to have an opportunity to use her therapeutic music in a youth art program.  First Friday Art Club came to mind and we immediately got busy planning the event.

The beautiful harp

The plan we created was for Maryalice to play several musical pieces, each with a different tempo and rhythm, including recognizable music and improvisational sounds.  For each song or piece of music played, students were given a different implement to make marks on their page. We started the class with graphite pencils.  

Something Familiar

Since pencils are a familiar medium for most students, familiar imagery developed during this segment.  The goal for this class was to let the harp music speak to the heart and create marks on paper using a variety of media.  Making marks is a unfamiliar concept to students who usually have an assigned image to create.  It is very rare for students to test the range of mark making, but it is highly valuable to the artistic process.

Let the music lead the way

The Tate Museum website describes a mark with this excerpt. Mark making describes the different lines, dots, marks, patterns, and textures we create in an artwork. It can be loose and gestural or controlled and neat. It can apply to any material used on any surface: paint on canvas, ink or pencil on paper, a scratched mark on plaster, a digital paint tool on a screen, a tattooed mark on skin…even a sound can be a form of mark making. Artists use gesture to express their feeling and emotions in response to something seen or something felt – or gestural qualities can be used to create a purely abstract composition.

Process through the music

Thinking of sound as a mark, the room was full of inspiration.  Allowing the music to inspire the physical marks on paper set aside thoughts from the day, problems in one's life and kept students in the present time.  This process does not require much thought.  Process feelings and thoughts through the music and leave them on the page.

Dedicated mission

Even with a light and simple expectation for gestural marks on paper, some students had a dedicated mission to continue their daily sketches.  Sometimes comics shine in any medium.

Graphite to Color

After testing graphite pencils, students switched to colored pencils for another option with a different musical set.  This budding artist started to respond to my own erratic scribbling and let the shapes fly into repeat.

Marker Marks

Colored pencil transitioned to markers.  This was the favored media for most students.  This class preferred markers over all our media experiments.  "It's so close to painting." said one very vocal student.

Oil pastels

The last segment of the class introduced a mostly new medium to the class.  Oil pastels are fun to work with and glide over paper so smoothly.  "They make your hands dirty!" complained one student.  I was happy to hear they had the opportunity to experiment with oil pastels in the past.  Despite oil pastels making hands easily messy, they provide a blending option not possible with markers or colored pencils.

Free Flowing

Maryalice ended her musically inspired session with a free flowing, improvisational piece that jumped around and had no recognizable rhythm.  This student reflected that free flowing feel by experimenting with oil pastels.  She appreciated the texture the paper revealed when the pastel was scribbled across the surface.  This revelation is most often the spark for new work with an artist.  Test the waters and work with what floats best.

This wraps up another fun First Friday Art Club at the Southeast Steuben County Library.  Check back here in November to see the wondrous creatures developed during Calligraphy Birds & Beasts with Wynn Yarrow.

register today!

Thanks for visiting,

Erica 

Ps.  Maryalice will offer harp & heART to adults, 18 years and older, on Saturday, November 18, 2017 from 12-3 pm in the library for the Saturday Adult Art class series called Crystal City Creators.  Space is limited, so register today.

You won't want to miss this class!

Coil Creations

Coil Coaster

First Friday Art Club in August went in stitches.  Coil Creations was the fiber based theme, which proved to be more of a struggle than originally anticipated.

Just getting Started

The process to make a vessel by coiling is to take a base cord (we had clothes line, paracord, and very thick yarns to test), then wrap the cord with a thinner string and stitch with a needle.

That's the method!

There were fourteen eager students ready to create something that afternoon.  Many factors lead to a struggle with this project.  In general, kids do not sew or even hold a sewing needle in these modern, technology laden days.  It was hard for the students to understand the flow of the thread through the cord.

Round & Round

Sewing is a skill prevalent in my life and I had the 

assumption that this knowledge is shared in school.  I quickly learned that our tutorial with terrific pictures lacked the simple steps of moving the thread through the coils, keeping the string fluid and avoiding knots.

A table surface was helpful

 Luckily there were two other adults ready to help with the process, but the string kept defeating these makers.  Poor quality embroidery floss continued to knot upon itself, causing loads of frustration.  Good thing we had persistence to finish the project.

Tons of Time

This project took lots of patience on the part of teacher and student.  My sample, seen at the beginning of this post, only grew to coaster size, but some students were determined to make a true container.  This little pink vessel above seemed fit for a fairy.

Practice Makes Perfect

Some students learned this process on their own time at home.  After several attempts, they discovered their mistakes and were able to cruise through this class.  Practice makes perfect with any skill.  Pushing forth can lead to a beautiful final project, but I admit this time-consuming process is not for most.  Hands can cramp, needles can disappear on the floor, and string will always knot.  

Keep trying

While we put our struggles behind us, check back in September when we make Stained Glass Fake Out drawings.  This should be a relaxing project to prep the mind for the first days of school.  It will be a colorful experience.

Thanks for visiting!

~erica

Cyanotypes

The SSC Library First Friday Art Club explored cyanotype printing on June 2.  Special guest instructor, Marnie Lersch, led the exploration.

Cyanotypes, GO!

Marnie defined the term cyanotype by breaking down the word.  Cyan is blue and type meaning print, so you can say this is like a blue print.  Having worked in a blue printing facility, we were lucky to NOT smell the diazo process, which can knock out a person with the ammonia fumes.

Chemical Overview

Students who arrived early got a chance to peruse the sample and supply table.  Marnie showed interested parents the chemicals which we would use to complete the process.  These chemicals are light sensitive, meaning they need to be kept out of sunlight.  Since they are hazardous, everyone was instructed to wear gloves while applying the liquid mixture to the fabric being used.

Safety First when Working

First step in this class was to prepare our fabric with the light sensitive chemical mixture. Using foam brushes, rubber gloves, and table cloths, each student was responsible for this step. We often remind our students that safety is always first when making art.  We only get one set of lungs and the skin we're in, so they have to last a lifetime.

Time to add the Goodies

Once the chemical application was dry, it turned a pea-green hue and it was time to get creative.  Using items we collected from the garden and an array of interesting shaped goodies, each student took time to compose their image.  This required a bit of thinking about positive and negative space, as well as transparent versus opaque density.

Wrapped and Protected

After composing their imagery, the students wrapped up their fabric on a cardboard sheet sandwiched by bubble wrap and secured with clothes pins.  There was a whipping wind to contend with outside and we did not want all of the loose items to go flying!

Waiting for the Sun

Once outside, the sun was in control of this project.  

Each student was a watch-guard protecting their projects from the wind.

Make your Mark

I tested this process and teamed up with a student with a bubble wrap experiment.  "What will happen if we leave the bubble wrap on?," we wondered.  As the sun processed the image, this student took a chance to use her body as her signature!

Expose in the Sun for about 10 minutes

After about 5-10 minutes of bright sun exposure, the chemicals on the fabric turned a slate gray/ green tone and Marnie told us to wash our fabrics in clean water.  This was a fast action of tossing materials into bins and rushing to the water tubs to process the image.

Leaves and Seashells were flying!

If you can imagine the flock of leaves, seashells, glass nuggets, and macaroni literally flying into storage bins, the mad rush panicked everyone to make sure they finished their projects before the end of class.  Washing the fabric in water surprised everyone at how fast the fabric turned from green to blue.  The imagery everyone composed was so gorgeous.  This project offered immediate gratification.  Who doesn't like that?!

Success

The variety of blue tones this process offers is quite lovely.  I have a blue love-affair and believe I will further explore this process in my home studio.  One parent who enjoyed the results of this process envisions a Cyan Family Room.  She took notes on the chemicals needed and borrowed some books to further investigate.  If you have interest to learn how to make cyanotypes, visit this Alternative Photography for more information.  

Check back in July to see what Steampunk Costumes our crew creates as they prepare for the ever-epic Library Unmasked: Steampunk Edition cosplay event.

Until then, thanks for visiting!

~erica

Pointillism

Painting in the pointillism technique was the goal for First Friday Art Club in March.  This was a lesson I recall thoroughly enjoying when I was in Junior High School.  The method can be time consuming, but meditative and therapeutic.

An Apple a Day

My "lesson" was really just a slide of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.  This is one of the most recognizable images when Pointillism, Divisionism, or Neo-Impressionism is discussed.

Eye See You

The plan was to show a few examples of the technique and discuss the simple method of using only dots to represent the imagery.  My preference is to keep the "lesson" light and let the student discover the way.  This was one of the few painting classes I've hosted and I see the "way" was slightly askew from the intended method.

Adorable Images

After supplies were passed out and drawings were approved, students took their time painting their masterpieces.  The trouble they had was maintaining a dotted system versus a paint stroke system.  This was not a failure, though, just a lesson for them and myself.

Solar System

Having very few chances to actually paint, it's a struggle to just use dots, when the paint is so fun to mix and spread on the surface.  It was hard for most to resist spreading paint over the canvas and watching it dry.  

Super Star

Any student who had the patience to paint just dots found joy in the process and requested to do this more often.  I feel that request should be met.  Discovering techniques that spark joy is important in our very busy, technologically overwhelming world.

Landcape

Some students created their own worlds, while others represented cartoon characters.

Toothless the Dragon

I find the variety of images the students choose to work with to be very intriguing.

Dreaming of Palm Trees

Some chose warm scenes to "travel to" while ignoring the cold winter weather outside.  

Others created vibrant scenes of whimsy.

Go Pokemon!

When it comes to art, it's all about the process, not just the product, and everyone enjoyed the process!  Several students stayed 15 minutes past the end of class to continue working.  It was unfortunate that I had another program to attend at the Corning Museum of Glass, or they could have stayed until the library closed.

Fire Bird

The funny part of the two programs I hosted that day, was they both revolved around small parts making a full picture.  Pointillism is a series of paint dots composing a total image, while Mosaics do the same thing in a different medium.  My project at Family Night at the Corning Museum of Glass hosted 75 families in the education lab.  Reflecting on the similarity of these two projects is fun.

Mosaics at the Museum

Both of these projects are terrific for all ages.  Pointillism can be achieved with paint and brushes, crayons, finger paints, Q-Tip painting, or markers.  The concept is simple and achievable for almost all levels with minimal supervision.  

Dots on a Page

It's really just a series of Dots on a Page.  Mosaics are very similar.  The Family Night event saw lots of preschoolers gluing foam squares to a grid, but there were many parents and grandparents taking a chance with some therapeutic art.  Some even showed they like to think outside the box!

It's like a Mosaic Maze

Considering March is National Youth Art Month, the First Friday Art Club kicked off the month in style.  The paintings that were left with me are on display in the Young Adult section of the Southeast Steuben County Library.  Stop in and take a peek!

Special Collaboration for April and May

Check back next month to see what The Rockwell Museum 

has in store for our club in April and May.

Thanks for stopping by,

erica