Curious Creatures

Annabel Johnson, director of Children’s Art School dropped in to Pelham today to teach a one off session. It’s great for me to spend a little time with the children, getting to know how their creative minds think.

I did one of my favourite activities with them, building on the work Veena has been doing on developing characters and illustrations for stories.

We worked on collage techniques to create some curious characters.

We combined carefully selected images of animals, people and things cut from magazines. Children experimented with combinations until they found the one that worked the best…and got the most giggles!

The creatures morphed and changed by the second – it was hard to keep track of how they developed!

When we were happy with the result we began to work on a backdrop.

We used pastel on coloured paper to create a crazy, textured and colourful background.

We enjoyed getting messy, using layering and smudging to create lovely effects

The characters suddenly came to life when we laid them out in their new home, the shiny paper leapt out from the matt background.

We experimented with layouts, composition and refined the work we had started.

Some very surreal images emerged, we began to think about names for these new creatures; were they male/female, human or beast?

What amazing adventures could these creations have – I think your children might have some great dreams tonight!!!

We look forward to Veena’s finished bird stories after half term – maybe some of these new characters will appear???