Children’s Illustration for Wimbledon Bookfest day 2

The second day of our children’s Illustration for Wimbledon Bookfest enabled children to develop characters, taking them on exciting new adventures as part of a team. Children attending the first day of the course – click here – designed our characters and those joining for day 2 developed scenes and stories to bring them to life in some amazing adventures. A few children attended both days but many chose to do one or the other – developing different skills in each day.

The course was run by artist Ania Bas with Illustrator Amy Pennington. You can find out more about them by clicking their names

Meet our Characters.

Children learned collage techniques and had the opportunity to choose from a variety of materials to develop their ideas for a sequence of picture stories in a supportive environment.

We began the afternoon with a quick warm up and introductions – working together as a team is an important part of coming to Children’s Art School

We then did a few drawing exercises to get us thinking differently, looking and collaborating. We started to think about settings too.

Amy described a countryside scene – we drew with 2 coloured oil pastels, both hands together – that got us thinking and created some interesting effects.

We then drew a city scape – this time joined together as one with a partner. There was lots of laughter and it was hard drawing with our wrong hand, getting us to think harder about what we were drawing.

After the warm up we began to think about stories. Again, working in partners we quickly told each other a familiar story while the other made a quick cartoon strip style illustration as the the other was talking.

We then added some words to the story.We were then ready to start developing our own picture stories. We got into teams and planned an adventure for our cast of characters.

Kat-Kit, Sir Posh-a-lot, Evie, Derf, Aramir and Scarlet Silver

Amy and Ania made a mock up based on the ideas given to them by children. It is important to us that children are given the freedom to develop their own ideas and that activities are not too prescribed.

Children were then given access to a wide variety of carefully chosen images and materials and began to develop the first part of a 3 part picture story.

There was lots of freedom and choice at this point as the stories developed and ideas came to life. Adults circulated and discussed, developing ideas with the children and helping them decide how these could be achieved.

Amy and Ania stopped the children at various points to discuss how stories were developing and strategies for illustrating their ideas through visual means. We discussed the beginning, middle and end of a story, how to create drama and resolve the issues for the characters.

Simple strategies were used to indicate important parts of the story – a clock to indicate time.

Objects that posed an awkward or interesting question – What is in the suitcase?

Children had to discuss ideas and make decisions amongst the group as to what to include and how best to illustrate their ideas – an exercise in democracy and planning. Great skills for real life!

Children had fun articulating their ideas – a lemonade competition where the best lemonade was so bubbly it exploded from your ears, and poor Kat-Kit sitting in an iced bath so he didn’t melt – only to be gobbled up by Sir Posh-a-lot in the next scene!

Children combined drawing and collage to create these fantastical worlds and had time to talk and let their imaginations run wild. It was a joy to watch. So rarely do they get this amount of unrestricted time to let an idea unfold and express it with a range of easily accessible materials.

The final scenes were developed speedily – but our ideas were well developed by this point and we shared the finished work with excited parents as they arrived.

I would love to see these stories develop – we think Sir Posh-a-lot has a great future as a character – the children adored him. We look forward to seeing his continued adventures on bookshelves in the not so distant future.