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 BIG DRAW EVENTS 2011

Landliesfallow- Drawing from Nature .

Family drop in session 15^th October 2011 1.00-4.00p.m

Meadows Art Gallery, Nottingham.

 

In partnership with Landliesfallow CIC I ran a drop in workshop for families within the area of the Meadows Nottingham, entitled Drawing from Nature. Landliesfallow aims to engage urban areas with the environment and outdoor space through creative and environmental workshops.

For Drawing from Nature, we used a variety of drawing and looking activities to encourage the group to explore the green spaces around a local park.

The activities included

Making paint from natural materials

Drawing and painting plants and flowers collected from the park

Imaginative drawings- What flowers/plants will these seeds turn into?

Making sketchbooks

Choosing and completing a range of drawing challenges  

The drawing sketchbooks were the most popular activity and the challenges also proved particularly popular, they encouraged dialogue and interaction between family members and other children ( Challenge - take a bark rubbing. The conversations it promoted. What’s the best way to take a bark rubbing?, What trees can you see?What is the difference between the barks?Draw everyone you havecome with today. Who have you come with today? Who else has come with their grandma/cousin/uncle/brother)

The sketchbooks were also designed to be taken home and were simple to make to encourage children and families to create and re-use at home.

Another couple of teenage boys re-enacted Georges Marvellous Medicine by creating strange paint mixtures from beetroot,spices, vinegar, onion skin dye, berries and cornflour and then using them to create pictures.

We were fortunate to have a beautiful day which meant we could spill out of the room onto the patio outside, and explore the green spaces with out getting too cold/wet/muddy.

The feedback was really positive, one mum commented on how the drawing challenges encouraged communication and interaction between children and their parents, she liked the fact that they were unusual and weren't phrased in child-like language, she said it gave her an opportunity to use more challenging language with her son, to think of different ways to describe and express what they were doing.

One child Adam, spent the whole session on his sketchbook, he loved the fact that he could take it away with him and said he was going to add to and develop it when he got home. He showed us every drawing he had done and how he had also collected things to stick in to his book. Another group liked how the painting was different from how they might paint at school and the freedom of being able to mix together unusual materials and see what colour they made. Beetroot was by far the favourite as it gave the strongest colour, although squashing up berries was the favourite when it came to actually making the paint.