chrimbo cards

An angel design this time. Each one different as they are still all hand-drawn in pen and shaded with pencil. They are on white card tho' the pic makes them look bluish! Again, will offer these in my shops in packs of 3 (A6 single fold complete with envelopes).

It's not too early for Christmas is it?

 

clay faces and big ships

In y1 today (5/6 year olds) we made faces out of air-drying clay. We used 'sausages' and 'balls' to add the features. Lollipop sticks and pencils were used to impress details.We even implanted wool for hair - we are going to trim them when the clay has dried!

 

 

The y5's began to papier mache their ships - they are studying 'Exploration & Discovery' this term. There are 15 ships all together, so more of an invasion force than an exploration!

cityscapes

Today the y2 children (6/7 yr olds) printed cityscapes using craft sticks. They were able to create convincing skylines and showed a fair degree of control over their mark making. Not sure whether to leave them b/w or add colour. First instinct is to leave them well alone. The aim is to display them side by side as a panorama on one of our long walls.

 

 

cards in shop

Have just listed some packs of cards in my Folksy shop. Each and every card is hand-drawn and they come in packs of 3 (complete with envelopes). The content of each pack will therefore vary (no two cards will be the same) as will card colour as they are drawn on recycled offcuts.

 

 

more cards

Have been faffling about with some more hand-drawn cards. These have added pencil shading! I must make the effort this weekend to list some sets in my shops. I'm thinking along the lines of £5 for a pack of 3 (complete with envelopes!). Even though I say so myself, these must be a bargain - 3 original pieces of art for less than the price of a couple of cups of coffee.

 

 

They are A6 single fold on recycled offcuts of card.

staff room decor

Our new staff room is looking a little bare at the moment, so until we can get to IKEA (!) I decided to throw a couple of paintings on the walls.

Started this one on Monday;

 

 

 

 

This is it finished today. Was trying for a sort of scratched film look. 



 

 

And this is it on the wall.

 

 

On the opposite wall I've stuck an 'old' painting that was lying against the wall in my 'studio'. Had a couple of nice comments so far about this one;

Both paintings are 100 x 60 cm, acrylics on canvas.

more finds

Came across a huge outdoor 'jumble sale' in town yesterday. Spotted these and snapped them up - though not too sure what I'm going to do with them! They appear to be gaming pieces. They are metal and the stand works as a small spring, making the horse and rider wobble backwards and forwards. If anyone can shed any light I'd be most grateful. Each piece stands about 5cm (2") tall.

 

The sad thing is that there are only 17 legs and 4 tails between all 5 pieces.

 

 

 

Also bagged a scrabble game with wooden letter tiles that I was going to sell on - but my wife might have nabbed them for jewellery purposes! Interestingly, being a German set the o's and u's have umlauts.

Test

Am trying out a simple post from my iPad.

Update - Yay! It worked!

meet Mlle Bobine

Here's the first thing I've made from the vintage French spools - Mademoiselle Bobine (Bob-een). Quite pleased with how she turned out. She stands around 18cm tall and has been painted in acrylics. Her arms are moveable and held on with vintage buttons. She sports a jaunty and chiq felt neckerchief. Wasn't sure about the base - I did toy with the idea of decoupaging words like 'metro' and 'Paris' on but decided to leave it plain. Might list her in my Folksy shop - will keep you updated.

 

 

 

brocante find

Whilst on holiday in France we visited a few brocantes (flea markets) where you can just about about pick up anything and everything. Chanced upon someone selling a bag of vintage spools - 29 of them for 5 euros. A bargain! As you can see they have 'character' (imperfections and a bit wood wormy). One or two ideas with what to do with them, shall post as soon as. Any suggestions would be most welcome. They measure about 5cm top to bottom. 

 

 

you can't see the wood for the trees..

3D decoupage today with y4's (8/9 yr olds). They're about to start looking at 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in Literacy so we created wooded landscapes at night. The aim is to use them not only for display purposes but, via the visualisers, to project them onto the classroom wall as a backdrop for drama. They could also be used for small puppet type shows. 

 

 

bareback rider

Over the hols my wife 'bullied' me into getting an ipad! Am slowly getting to grips with it and thought I'd try and add an entry to this blog using it. Failed miserably! I managed to take a photo (using the ipad) of a recent sketch but then for the life of me couldn't insert it into my blog.I ended up doing it the usual way - digital camera, SD card onto laptop, laptop into blog.

Any help or advice as to how to do it solely on the ipad would be most welcome as it would certainly remove a lot of the faff and be much more flexible.

The sketch came about after having seen an artist on the quayside at La Rochelle. She had a range of images for sale (at what I thought were quite steep prices) and one that caught my eye was of a lady standing on the back of a horse. I copied the essence of the pose but drew it in my own 'style' ;

 

 

 

I had to stick several sheets of A4 paper together to get it as I wanted it. Unfortunately I forgot to get the name of the artist and didn't have my camera with me to take any photos. Might reproduce this as a shaded drawing as I don't think I'd be able to do it justice as a painting.

collaborative abstracts

Back in the swing of things.The walls of our school are pretty bare at the moment, so, in an effort to brighten up a small corner, one of the classes had a go at creating abstract paintings. On some small spare canvases using acrylics, we painted a variety of shapes and lines. Each child had only one colour and after a couple of minutes of painting we passed the canvases on to another person. We were able to create 14 pics in about an hour. We all began with squares/rectangles, then circles and finally lines and dots.

 

 

Not sure whether to hang them singly or grouped randomly.Will ponder it over the weekend.

off to work we go

Back to school tomorrow. The summer hols seem to have lasted forever this year- probably because for the first time in about 6 years there wasn't a gifted & talented summer school at the start - so we managed to spend almost 5 lovely weeks at our 'chateau'! Didn't manage to do very much in the way of DIY as it was just too hot!
Whilst in deepest, darkest France I was however contacted by someone wanting to use one of my paintings for a publicity brochure (for performances of 'Brassed Off'- which is a superb play/film that you should make an effort to see.). Couldn't see any harm in it so I gave permission and am waiting for a couple of copies to land on my doormat.
The big news is that I've not got a class responsibility this year but am instead going to be teaching just art/design technology throughout the school - yay!! Am really looking forward to a fantastically creative year with all of the children - even the threat of an impending Ofsted inspection can't dampen my spirits. Hopefully will have lots of pics to share in the very near future.