Children’s art

Windows on the World

/ sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

In their passports, participants of the Storytelling and Art from Around the World course inserted a picture of themselves as a character of their choosing complete with name, magical attributes, and planet of origin.

P1000267

P1000262

 

P1000263

Using coloured acetates, windows were made to look in upon various characters created in response to folk stories. This week: Il Gatto Mammone, or The Tale of the Cats in which a girl tugs up a cauliflower revealing a large tunnel into the earth that leads her to a house of cats and adventures therein.

 

20181016_165901[1]

 

 

Advertisements

Voices on the Wind

/ sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

For the past five months, I’ve been a creative practitioner in a primary school, working with a storyteller to produce a record of the stories about the local area surrounding the school. We have covered a vast time period, from the Bronze age, right up to the mid-19th century. I have been using printmaking with the children to produce flags and banners to decorate a structure in the grounds now known as the ‘Tŷ unnos’, or ‘One-Night house’. In old Welsh law, it was stated that anyone who could build a house on common ground in a night, with a fire in the hearth by morning could own the land as a freehold.

Ty Un nos9

 

Banners and flags are interspersed all around the Tŷ unnos, drawn and printed by the children and myself in response to the tales.  The map below is a record of traditional Welsh myths that Lowri shared with the children.

 

 

 

 

Natural Abstracts

/ sarahjfeatherstone / 2 Comments

Some stunning paintings made in response to two stories from Africa today on the Children’s Art and Storytelling course that I am running at Llanover Hall Arts Centre. ‘Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky’ – a Nigerian folktale, and ‘The Lion’s Whisker’ – an Ethiopian Folktale.

africa1

Elements by Jim age 9

 

africa16

African landscape by Paddy, age 9

 

africa15

Camouflaged Lion by Iolo, age 6

 

africa9

Sun by Paddy, age 9

 

africa10

Witch Doctor by George, age 7

 

africa11

Witch Doctor Dance by Jim, age 9

 

africa12

Elements II by Jim age 9

 

africa13

African Landscape By George, age 7

Preliminary Drawings:

Lion, by George; Winged Lion with Horn by Paddy, Mask by Paddy, Compound of Sun and Moon for the Water by George, Sun and Water by Iolo.

This Is What I Would Turn Into At Night

/ sarahjfeatherstone / 1 Comment

Here are some of my favourite art works by children I have been working with over the past months. They have been responding to old folk stories from many cultures.

The Lady of the Lake (Wales)

schoolproject21

Maui’s Magic Fishing Hook (Maori)

Maori workshop10

Maori workshop4

The Fox Maiden (Korea)

korea20(2)

Guardian Totems (Korea)

Medusa (Greece)

 

Gelert (Wales)

schoolproject16(2)

Baba Yaga (Russia)

russia5

Blodeuwedd and Twm Carnabwth (Wales)

Aztec Gods (Mexico)

The Bird with Two Heads, and Ganesha (India)

Huitzilopochtli (Mexico)

korea14

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visit to Cardiff Print Workshop

/ sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

As part of my role as creative practitioner at Ton yr Ywen Primary school, I arranged for two groups of Y2 children to visit Cardiff Print Workshop as part of the Lead Creative Schools Project. As we have been using cyanotype printing to create banners and flags from drawings of the Welsh folk stories the children have been hearing from Lowri, I wanted to show them the magical cyanotype process, and let them have a go at making some pictures.

First they arranged a selection of objects onto the specially coated paper and we put them under the UV light for a few minutes.

When the pictures were ready, the children could watch them come magically to life in the water.

Voilà! The finished work.

DUZCQC-WAAMrF8o

Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave

/ sarahjfeatherstone / Leave a comment

For the last week of this five week cycle of storytelling and art from around the world, we travelled to Russia to hear about the enigmatic Baba Yaga.  She is a many-faceted figure, variously seen as a Moon, Death, Winter, Earth Goddess, totemic matriarchal ancestress, female initiator, or archetypal image.[4]

After discussing some of Baba Yaga’s traits: iron teeth, lives in a house that walks around on chicken legs, sails through the sky in a mortar yielding a pestle,  the children listened to one of the many tales involving Baba Yaga: Vasilisa the Brave. It exhibits Baba Yaga’s ambiguous nature – scary, yet wise, and the choices of a girl who triumphs through courage and perseverance.

Below is a selection of the wonderful illustrations of Baba Yaga by children on the course. I’m always amazed at the detail, personality and energy of these drawings that the children do without hesitating as they listen to the stories.

 

Vasilisa’s magic doll by Lily.

russia2

 

 

 

Folktales from India

/ sarahjfeatherstone / 1 Comment

Children’s Storytelling and Art Course, Week four. The children were interested in the concept of having two heads after hearing the Indian folktale about a bird with two heads that can’t agree. They drew pictures of themselves with the head of something or someone they would or would not like to be attached to and we discussed story ideas around what it would be like to sleep/go to school/get dressed etc.

 

 

Some responses to the story of the birth of Ganesha, and how he got his elephant head.

 

 

Some other Gods, Goddesses, and a demon created using an inverted stencil as a starting point.