workshop – Kids Atelier

Art 2: Self-portrait

—Observe your face in the mirror, notice its main features, emotions, colours and also background.
—Paint the self-portrait as large as possible without using sketching tools, but you may outline the important parts with paint strokes.
We looked at the Fauves and the painting of Kees van Dongen, The Corn Poppy, 1919, for inspiration. We focused on painting the background simultaneously with the face—mentioning the theory of complementary colours in order to obtain the right contrast between colours.
The children worked expressively and spontaneously while also demonstrating an eagerness to learn. I am really enjoying their results.

Dance 1: Breathing/moving sculptures

We talked about the importance of breathing and the organs involved in it. Kids tried consciously to breathe with their belly. After a good warm-up we tried to build moving, breathing sculptures, resulting in nice, creative moments and fun ideas.

Art 1: Writing/drawing own story

In this session we stimulated our storytelling and writing skills along with drawing and illustrating. We took advantage of our opportunity to host Sacha, a visiting art teacher from the US, who helped some children to build their stories in English. The children chose 3–4 objects from the collection I had prepared for them. The objects of their choice, whether funny, playful, bizarre, ordinary or very special, became the characters in their story. After writing a short story they went on to draw the objects that represented their main characters. Some children chose to do a single illustration, while others were more attracted to making a storyboard.