How to be a Visual Storyteller – day 1

Illustrator Amy Pennington joined us once more to run our popular illustration course. Here is Amy during the warm up – demonstrating a drawing activity.

…and helping them to visualise characteristics! (sorry Amy…couldn’t resist!)

The children warmed up bodies and fingers with a few activities.

We began with a collaborative drawing exercise where we all drew each other without letting our pencil leave the page…its harder than it looks!

It was a great way to get to know one another!

We then drew each other in pairs.

Then cut our drawings in half and joined them back together to create a new character.

We went on to discuss new characters and their characteristics! Using the illustrations from Alice in Wonderland to help us!

We brainstormed a character – Its greatest fears, likes,  dislikes and gave it a name.

We made a quick sketch…

We began by developing its head using collage.

Then worked on the body using paint…

And finally the legs using charcoal and oil pastel…

The final characters emerged slowly!

Finally the characters were edited down into a simple A4 line drawing. We will use these characters to start developing stories tomorrow.

We ended the day by playing with the pieces of the characters….moving them around to create even more fantabulous creatures!