Team Spirit Mural

The finished mural with the motto "Together Everyone Achieves More" The first letters of which spell TEAM

Taking the theme of “Team” lastweek I spent time working with pupils from Ghyllgrove Juniors to create a 16 ft mural that will adorn the school bike shed.

The pupils started the week working on designs inspired by what they most liked about their school, what their school was particularly good at and what their favourite subjects were. Prior to commencing work on the design the children took rubbings from the soles of their shoes, and objects, surfaces from within their school. Once the pupils collated their inspiration materials it was time to get to work on formatting ideas for the final design.

After the design was finalised, I drew up a copy for the children to work their designs and include their ideas, patterns and images

We decided the purple and yellow worked very well for the first panel with the pencils

This was a alternative design, which was less  complex, however the children opted for the more challenging design

We decided that the mural wouldbe a four panel piece, each panel representing one of the four team colours(red, green, blue and yellow) within the schools. To add a bit of spark to the piece we decided each coloured panel could only be paitned with the team colour, the complementary colour of the team colour and black and white.Therefore the red panel could only be red – green –black-white.

After consolation with the children the final design was drawn up and sketched onto the boards.

Prior to paitning I drew up the design onto board

I was so impressed with how the children worked as teams to complete the panels in just 2 days

Adding colour to the first board

Making sure the paint brush strokes all go the in the same direction

The bulk of the painting completed on the green boards

The blue board ready for outlining and finishing touches

The red board being painted

Nearly complete and starting to take shape

Using acrylic paint the children concentrated on painting the mural. Children were shown how to mix colours, to apply paint smoothly to board, how to hold a paint brush and learnt a little colour theory.

Completed yellow board

Completed green board

Completed blue board

Completed red board

Finally finishing touches were added to the boards prior to placing next to each other to evaluate the overall piece

Before the pieces go outside theywill be painted with outdoors varnish to protect the colour and the board –this will also add a nice sheen to the finished mural.

If you are interested in finding out more about having a mural painting for your company, school, group please contact me on lisamart@hotmail.co.uk

Natural Form Drawings

I thought I would share with you a series of drawings that I have been working on in my sketchbook. I am an strong believer in the use of the sketchbook for all artists, illustrators, amateur and professional, any age etc. My sketchbook is a forgiving and unquestioning place that I can go to to write, draw or mark out my thoughts and ideas. I use my book to plan out my paintings, thinking about the choice of colour, composition, texture and how to use the space of the canvas. In this series of drawings I have been looking at cell forms found in the natural world. Using bold complementary and contrasting colours I have been enjoying experimenting with the use of positive and negative space, whilst addressing personal issues relating to illnesses within my family.

The drawings are work in progress and still under working titles.

The drawing is sketched out using white crayon first to give me a working guide

I have always worked quite methodically, moving from one colour to another gradually building up the image

Here are the six finished sketches, I am not to sure about the zoom picture - this probably will not be transferred to canvas. For me it doesn't quite work or have the impact of the other pieces. Every time I pick up a paint brush or pencil I learn something, whether it is about how to apply the medium, create shading, a new texture etc. Even if the work is not a success I think it is always good to look at what you have learnt from this and apply this to the next piece of work.

Murex - the complexities of motherhood 2012

Orchideae - beauty 2012

Cytherea - when love takes over 2012

Zoom untitled 2012

Diatomea II - The four of us 2012

Diatomea untitled 2012

Can you tell what it is yet?

I have had an amazing week at local school in Basildon working on a large project as part of the schools art week. The project is not quite finished yet, there are a few finishing touches to be made, however I wanted to share the children's brilliant work with you all.

The aim of the project was to encourage all the pupils in the school to embrace art and craft ideas, techniques and methods for the duration of the school week. The theme that we looked at for the art week was "Me, Myself and I".

Prior to the art week I visited the school and carried out a training session with teachers on how to draw a portrait - working out measuring systems to teach the pupils how to draw a portrait to scale. Once the pupils had practiced this the teachers encouraged them to create a piece of work where they drew half their face to the best of their ability and the other half using images that represented their favourite things. Some pupils collaged these, some drew images, some stuck objects and craft materials onto their drawing  - using these objects and collage materials to represent the facial features. I will post a couple of these pictures when they have been completed.

The project I worked on with the pupils involved a learning about using a paint brush, mixing colour, ratios of paint to use, exploration of marks, using modroc as a sculpture material and being confident in their own unique talent.

 For the first part of the sculptureeach pupil was given a circle form with a hole in the centre and covered this with newspaper - this would provide a base for our modroc to adhere to.

 Once the circle was covered in newspaper, it was time to get good and messy covering the circle with modroc. I was impressed with how well all pupils from year 3 - to year 6 managed to smooth the modroc and create a solid base. Once these were covered they were left for 24 hours to dry prior to painting.

 Before the pupils painted their circular sculpture we practiced some brush work, looking at what marks we could make using the brush, holding it in various positions. Pupils learnt that they could create fluid lines, holding the brush at the end of the handle and that they could make more controlled marks the colser they held the brush to the bristles.

Once we had explored our mark making, we moved on to colour mixing. Each pupil painted a positive image using black powder paint. Pupils then chose a primary colour and it's complementary colour i.e. red and green, yellow and purple or blue and orange. Using powder paint the pupils were challenged to mix as many different shades and tones of the two colours as they could and paint in each of the sections created in the pictures negative space. A fantastic example of this is pictured above. The pupils really enjoyed colour mixing and learning how to use powder paint as a medium. Learning that they could mix strong tonal colours by adding more powder and lighter shades by adding more water to the mixture.

 Finally we got around to painting our circle sculpture. For this part we changed medium to acrylic paint. Once we all had our aprons on, the children painted their circle in their own design which they had previously planned out in their sketchbooks.

 The pupils painted a base colour - or mixture of colours onto their circle before adding areas of decorations, patterns, names and marks

 Pictured below are a selection of the finished circles. Don't they look amazing?

It always intrigues me when I am working with children (and adults come to think of it), how despite everyone being given the same instructions, same mediums, same materials not one object looks like another. I think these circle represent the pupils very well, showing that we are all different, all unique, all have our different talents and are all beautiful.

So can you tell what we are making? Have a guess and let me know. When the work has all been completed I will post a picture on my blog.

Thanks for reading