I wasn't good at art as a child and have never attended a single art class in my life (other than the ones conducted in school as part of the school curriculum). As a pre-schooler, I hated colouring. I thought that it was such a mundane activity and would much rather be counting, matching, sorting, writing alphabets or numbers etc... anything but draw or colour. Nathan is the same... when we are doing workbooks and it involves colouring, he'd skip the page! I don't insist that he completes the colouring exercises because I know he is still perfecting his pencil grip. With the amount of strength he is using to write/colour, I can perfectly understand why colouring is tiring. I do hope we can re-visit these pages when he's more comfortable though. Things didn't get any better on the art front when I started primary school. I can still remember that in primary 4 or 5, my art teacher was my chinese teacher, and art lessons were scheduled just before chinese lessons. 老师 would bring in a pile of 听写 exercise books during art class, and insist that unless we finished our 改正, we will not be allowed to proceed with art & craft work. I was really bad at 听写 and would usually have lots of 改正 to do. That meant, no art & craft for the the entire year! In secondary 1 & 2, art was an examinable subject and I really struggled with producing something that looked remotely nice so that I won't fail!
Anyway, I really admired people who can draw and paint well, and jumped on this opportunity to learn something new. Singapore Mom Bloggers is celebrating our 1st birthday and this is one of the many activities lined up to celebrate our 1st birthday.
The artist whose work we were supposed to 'copy' is Camille Pissarro. When I walked into the room, I saw pictures of two of his paintings.
I chose the second picture just because it LOOKED easier.
After a brief introduction, we were asked to start work... first to sketch in the horizon, and the outline of the main subjects. When I heard the word 'outline', I proceeded to pick out the black pastel, only to be told that we should use a light colour as it is easier to cover up mistakes. Black should be used last, when we are ready to finalise our strokes. Gosh! How 'smart' of me right? *puts back black crayon & picks a yellow one instead*
Next we were taught how to use short strokes to create the water and the sky. I was pretty surprised at how forgiving pastels were. They were pretty easy to manage as compared to paints, and not as messy as I remember them to be. Varying the pressure, we were able to achieve light and dark tones. Layering with shades of blue, I managed to get my water looking rather water-like and sky rather sky-like.
Now that we were more familiar with oil pastels, we started working on the subjects. Colouring in the sails and drawing in the houses in the horizon. I decided that there were too many houses and decided to replace some of them with trees instead. :) Presenting my masterpiece...
Trust me... this is way better than ANY art work I've produced in my entire life. Quality instruction and encouragement from fellow mums made the difference!
I managed to complete this small art work during my boys' nap time, and when I came home with my masterpiece, I quickly showed it to Noah...
Me: Noah, look! What do you see?
Noah: Boats!
Me: Is it nice?
Noah: Nice!
Thank you. That was all the affirmation I needed. :)
Heart Studio conducts adult canvas classes to teach basic art sketching to canvas art. 2 people to start a class. The school also offers art classes for children 3 - 12 years old, and they have school holiday classes in June too!
Disclaimer: This art lesson was sponsored by HeART studio. All opinions are my own.
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