What's keeping me busy.

I  decided to steal myself away from the sewing machine for a while to prevent curvature of the spine setting in! I thought it would be good to escape for a giant latte and a little blogging time.

Lately I have been doing a fair amount of quilt planning. A lot of cutting up children's clothes into neat little squares. Turning children's drawings into quilt blocks and some new character sketches that I am desperately trying to find time to make real.
I have also squeezed in a little painting time and I must say I'm really enjoying this. I need to carve out more time to paint.

Well my giant latte needs drinking and it has arrived accompanied by the most delicious blackberry tart,  which I hadn't ordered but have been treated to..... diet can start tomorrow! I shall now give it the attention it deserves.

Bye for now folks.

Susan
P.s. if the pics don't show up I will edit later.  X

Art residency Cubist portrait

Today I had the privilege of working with four  year 6 students to make a piece of literacy inspired art.

The subject was a book that was studied as a class earlier in the year. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne is centered around two main characters, Bruno and Schmuel. Set against the backdrop of a concentration camp their is a certain bleakness. I felt it would be a good contrast to use Picassos cubist portrait as the inspiration for the portrait.
Wow, what a great choice! We started off,  after looking at Picassos work, by waking up the right side of our brains with some sketching of cubist body parts. We then cut out elements they everyone liked and started to place them onto the board. This is where the portrait started to come alive. As they began to add colour it was a joy to hear the children discussing how they were using colour - the emotions associated with certain colours- and how they could explore using colour freely once they realised that hair didn't have to be brown.
Here is their wonderful cubist portrait of Bruno and Schmuel.