Geli printing with children

Geli prining is a wonderful way to relax and enjoy colour , pattern , shape and surprise. One can buy a Geli pad from any art outlet in South Africa , although they are very expensive. I decided to make my own pad which works perfectly but does not last longer than 3 weeks. 

I use the large box of gelatine that I buy at any food shop. I mix the gelatine with about 500ml of boiling water. I blend it until smooth with a hand held blender. I use a flat, smooth bottomed dish and pour the mixture into this dish. Leave it to set. 

When the gel pad is hardened, use a sharp knife to loosen the edges and it will pop out. I place my pad on a board of sorts. One can keep it in the fridge when it is not in use, however I cover it with plastic and use it a lot. 

To spread paint onto the geli , we use a brayer or art printing roller. The idea is to spread a - not to thick and not to thin layer of paint onto the gel. 

There are a mirriad of things we can do to create interesting prints. When I work with children , we work slowly and step by step in creating prints. 

This was a beautiful workshop and highly successful in every way. 

These home made woodblocks can be used to create pattern onto the geli pad and then pull a print off onto the paper. Any paper can be used to pull a print including fabric. 

 

Art Times at The Studio

News at The Studio - First Edition

 

Welcome to the very first news editin of art with Caren at The Studio. In this news broadcast, I would like share some of my thought on art as well as some of the work we have enjoyed this term. I have selected random pieces of work as a visual taste of our work. 

This has been a delightful start to the year as we began with our paper curling creations and then moved on to a pencil representation of these curls and twirls. It always amazes me what children can create. We always us a B pencil and a 5 or 6 B are the better ones for creating a range of darks and lights. During art classes , I like to introduce the children to art ideas and terms. VALUE is one of the elemnets of art and it refers to the shading of light and dark. 

In our art classes we ofte use visual objects or pictures as tools to create our work. If I asked you to draw a flower - one kind of picture would emerge , however if we talked about and looked at flowers and THEN you drew a flower - a very different flower would be created. I have become aware of some art classes, both children and adult, where the teacher or facilitator "fixes" the artists work for them. This is not the way I work because it is not my personal art philosophy. I will guide and point and show so that they child may practice. I hold to the truth that art is about problem solving and more than that , that we all learn when we have to struggle with the problem. 

 I have started a younger class in which we create and mess . This term we learnt a little about Picasso and his CUBISM phase and we created Crazy Faces out of cardboard. 

 https://youtu.be/FdbLYNfolDE

Jim Dine is a North  American  Pop Artist. Here is a link to some of his work. We learnt about him in our younger class and created heart, Jim Dine paper bag works. I wanted the children to think through Art being painted on many different surfaces, including paper bags. 

Sometimes in art, we embrk on some impromptu works. These deightful shelf works were an example of these. These children selected pictures of objects from magazines to place on a shelf or , in some cases, two shelves. Then they drew and painted these deightful drawings with watercolour paint. 

Art at The Studio has an Instagram page and a Facebook page. I share someof the videos we watch as well as interesting art from around the world. I also share a daily art journal prompt , such as the one below - the box of matches. I walk the artist through the drawing activity for the day. Practicing drawing is like any other skill - it takes time. 

Observational drawing is the heart f my art classes. EVERYONE is an artist and with some guidance and encouragement can create something unique and worthy. The younger art class had an opportunity to draw from nature. These are absolutley wonderous. 

I run a flourishing adult art class on Thursday mornings and offer one of art workshops for anyone interested. Below is an example of our wooden artwork project. We were inspired by Sou African Artist Hugh Byrne and his work at The Investec Art Exhibition 2023.

In both adult and children's classes alike, I love to share some activities that stretch the mind. Below is one such ctivity. We drew the scrunched up paper with long sticks( pencils at the end) . How can you show all the bends of the paper? Are you able to shade?  These activities "force" our brains to work in different ways and really create opportunities for us to see the world in new ways. 

This project below was based of long discussions and thinking about Architecture and in particular we looked at different buildings from around the world. These we truly beautiful reflections from these lessons. 

I run a once a month homeschool workshop morning. This term we have begun to make cardboard shoes. We looked at the history of the takkie and we had real takkies to work from. Then these brave and persistent children began this labour of love. I am so proud of them for pressing on. It was trick and tough going. We hope to finish these and spray paint them.

Yesterday , the younger group spent time thinking about different kinds of houses and we then began to draw - "our home" . It was interesting to me how they solved the problem of representing items in the house from both a face on and birds eye view. 

As this term draws to an end, I want to share some of the artists we thought about throughout this term. 

Frank Lloyd Wright - Architect

Frank Stella - North American Artist - 1936

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgaPuHDV8v0

Picasso

Jim Dine - North American. 

During this hliday, I am taing a small group of young artists to The National Gallery. I highly recommend this as a place to visit. The National Gallery has recently revampt itself . The walss are full of scrumptuous South African works as well as works from other countries. Last year we learned about Russian artist Kandinsky. See if you can spot his work hanging in the main hall. 

There is a beautiful Frank Stella work hiding among the works too. Can you find it? 

There is a dedicated childrens gallery where paintings are hung at a lower lever for smaller viewers. 

Please do not hesitate to ask questions about what we do at art and I do hope you have enjoyed this term with your children's work.