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!

Stained Glass Fake-Out

To get students ready for the new school year, I planned a relaxing project for First Friday Art Club in September.  I've seen fake stained glass projects and had them on the "To Do" list for awhile, but a colleague highly suggested this technique, having recently succeeded in the same lesson with a mixed age group.

Blueprints, tracings and color

In order to create a stained glass project, an artisan will create a drawing.  The drawing will then get scaled to the size of the window or project they are creating.  The scaled drawing is called a blueprint and used quite like a blueprint for architecture.  My students were given some time to sketch out a plan for their blueprint using office copy paper.

Careful coloring

Once the blueprint was finalized, each student took wax paper to create their fake stained glass.  I tried to equate the simplified techniques to actual glass preparation.  Students were told to "cut" their glass by tracing their blueprint with pencil onto the less waxy side of the wax paper.  The less waxy side of the paper accepts the marker ink better than the shiny side.  Once their drawing was transferred, color could be added to the composition.

"This part is my favorite."

The coloring phase excited everyone like the coloring pages that have become very popular.  I had some concern that this project would be too simple and quick for this age group, so I planned to let any quick workers make another.  Luckily that was not an issue.  Each student took their time planning their projects and placing the color precisely inside the lines.

Bold lines and Big shapes

I suggested to keep lines and shapes big and less complex.  No glass maker wants to cut sliver sized pieces of glass.  Adding the lead came or copper foiling would make the process almost unbearable.  With that idea understood and coloring wrapping up, each project needed to be taped to a matte board frame with the fake lead came applied afterward. 

Puffy Paint to the Rescue

The lead came replacement for this project was puffy paint.  I showed the option to outline the shapes in each composition with black sharpie, but also showed the puffy paint example and everyone gravitated toward that look.  By framing the wax papers first, the projects were less flexible and easier to take home, even with wet paint. 

Simple instruments

This project is achievable for many age levels and has been proven successful with varied ages in the same class.  Sharpie markers are suggested for their ability to stay and not smudge on the wax paper.  Rulers, copy paper, puffy paint and pencils were other simple instruments used to created this relaxing project.  No glass means no fingers cut!

Hold it up to the Light

Holding these finished projects up to a window let them truly shine. 

Simple and Sweet

Larger shapes to give the viewer's eye more to view would 

make this composition even more lovely.

Simplified Landscape

This artist skipped the black puffy paint at first, but then added it later.  Good choice!

Color every Inch

This artist chose to color every inch of her composition. I feel this was the closest resemblance to stained glass and would love to see it in glass form....

any makers ready to take on that challenge?

This wraps up another month of First Friday Art Club.  Join us in October for harp & heART with Maryalice Little.  There's still time to register!

Thanks for visiting!

~erica