The lesson is prepared and we were supposed to draw the shop today, but it rained and because this is a village school, they were very accommodating and the lesson is postponed till next Tuesday.
This is a one-off lesson I am giving to 10 & 11 year olds at my daughter’s children’s school.
I gave you the outline of the topic on Wednesday to inspire you as to how you would go about doing it.
Here is my take on the project: We wanted a coloured ground, so re-gessoed the 30cm X 40cm canvasses. (£1.00 each, thanks to Lucie’s research). Their coating of gesso was rather thin. I mixed some of my burnt sienna acrylic with enough extender to make the acrylic transluscent and patchy. Each canvas had corrugarted card stapled to the back so that the children can rest them on their bony knees without any dents!
The children applied the paint in advance using sponges (quick and cheap)
I have experimented with some techniques which will work within the budget of cost and time limits. We will draw the outline with a sharpie, then fill in the white areas using acrylic and a flat hogshair brush. There will be a bucket of water and the children can share the brushes (1 per couple) then wash them immediately in water. They will get a little dollop of white acrylic in a small metal dish – ex dog food toppers metal trays. This will be put in t he dishes in advance and covered in cling film.
b.t.w. I don’t really experiment like this when teaching my granddaughters, as there is time and the budget is more generous. The logistics of 30 brushes getting ruined is greater, and if a class is well planned, riot control is not a problem. They can then outline the windows in white using a cotton ear bud.
Back to the sharpies, which will neaten the edges and fill in the gables.
The only art teaching other than sowing techniques is to talk about what they see! For instance, the windows look black, not clear – except the ones with curtains. Will they draw each brick? Well, they will decide, but I’ll demo how to draw just a few tiles of the roof. The creeper stem can be drawn in black and screwed up paper can be dipped into green acrylic and pressed over to pattern it.
The roof can be painted with brushes using a transluscent reddish acylic, also mised with extender.
So, the lesson is planned and let’s see what the children come up with.
Below are some of the house portraits my granddaughters have done with me over the past 15 months. They are all about 40 X 50cm or 30 X 40. I wanted to recreate something like the drawing they did of their parent’s house – there we had a tea stained background of stretched paper, and they drew with bamboo pens and black acrylic ink.
Funnily enough, their home was not that large, but no doubt it must have seemed big to two little girls!
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