Paint the Great Outdoors, course 2 – day 1

The second of our ‘Paint the Great Outdoors’ summer courses took place at South Park Gardens in Wimbledon. A beautiful little park full of wonderful stimuli for the children to work from.

As the children arrived they made a personalised portfolio case to hold their work.

We then unrolled a large piece of heavyweight drawing paper for a giant collaborative and exploratory piece to get us started.

Matthew demonstrated how to use charcoal in different ways as a base for a large scale painting.

We made our own drawing implements from sticks and tape.

And got started. We looked at trees, houses, benches and the other people in the park!

Some beautiful drawings emerged.

We enjoyed the properties of charcoal – using fingers and hands! Sorry about the black knees!

We then used brushes and water to work on top of the charcoal and see what effects we could achieve.

After we layered the work further by adding paint – we kept the palette limited for now – only using black and white.

It became quite a bold piece.

We then worked individually using some of the skills we had just practiced.

We then worked in 2 groups.

Artist and illustrator Millie Knight worked with leaves and watercolours to create a little sketch book experimenting with techniques

The children foraged in the bushes for stimulus.

Matthew worked with thick primer, found materials and acrylic paint to make some backgrounds for a painting we will complete tomorrow.

We enjoyed making potions of paint mixed with sand, leaves and twigs…or anything we could find!

They made amazing surfaces – ready to be painted on tomorrow.

We were busy busy busy!

For the last part of the afternoon we enjoyed some quiet watercolour painting. We found our own special spot in the park with our friends – chatted, painted and had a very relaxing time!