A couple of weeks ago I arrived back in Calgary and began an intensive residency at Simons Valley Elementary School. The admin. team, 32 teachers and their students are involved over 19 days of studio programming and staff development. Each classroom is scheduled for four hours of contact time in the studio. The team planning took place in cyberspace in early December and we hammered out the details of the residency and the specific direction, media explorations and curricular links with each grade group.
A fundamental component of the residency was the creation of an art studio in which the work could take place. The school is large - and at capacity. So the multipurpose space in the centre of the school, which is used as the luchroom, was designated as the studio. For the course of the residency, the lunchroom was moved into the gym.

blind contour

We spent a few sessions working on blind contour. We drew from collections of natural objects that could be held and explored through touch. We also drew each other - beginning with the eyes.

We set up a drawing round robin in which a person draws the person across from them. Everyone draws at the same time to alleviate the discomfort of being the model. The black pens record the details of the eye - often overlapping them on the picture plane. We then looked for closed lines and filled them in with colored pencils.

studio work

garry oaks

batik

pastel resist

Sketching on the Francis Barkley