Workshops

Summer at the Art Workshop

Over the summer Susan Silverman of the Art Workshop in Longwood, FL asked me if I would come in and teach a collage class to her advanced teenage students. I love opportunities to work with children, especially those who are enrolled in art as an extracurricular activity. I find that kids who are enrolled in art school are just really happy to be there!

To begin, I shared my education and background in art, the fact that I have a Fine Art degree and that I wanted to be an artist since I was in third grade. Next I told them about the art galleries that I have my work in, that art is a business, and about the art licensing opportunities I have been fortunate enough to have. Then we got out the papers and the glue and I demonstrated the technique and answered questions. The neat thing about working with kids is that you don't really hear a lot of "I can't do that!" they really feel like they can do it if they try.

Once I finished with the basics of the demo, the kids hit the ground running! They had painted their own collage papers the day before with Susan, AND she had them start their sketches. I helped the students work on their under-paintings and I reminded them throughout the class that everything they had learned from Susan about composition, color, value (shadow, highlight and mid range), would be applicable in this collage process. They were well versed with shading and the color wheel; they already knew all about opposite and analogous colors - go Art Workshop!

When the kids started working their collage, and really applying their painting techniques to the process, their work really started to shine! I was really proud of how much they already knew, as well as what they learned from my demonstration of the technique.

The photo above shows Jolene with her finished lily collage. I really love how she handled the shading by using analogous colors (yellow, yellow orange, orange) and how she made sure to keep the background green value darker than they yellow flower value, so as to set it apart.

The kids at the Art Workshop were great, and they were well versed with the building blocks of art technique that they needed to experiment with new media!