Back at the 'Leccy.
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Guildford, Electric Theatre, Tablet art, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, teaching
Date: 19 February 2014 20:06:06
I've done a few art events for young people at the Electric Theatre but, until now, they've predominantly been shrink plastic sessions, which is fine, as they always sell out quickly and get very lovely feedback.
For some reason, this time, we all agreed that tablet art sessions might be a good fun thing and a bit of a change for all involved. And, yes it was :) I'm not 100% sure it was an easier session to do (although it was a lighter session to pack up and carry... but the charging of 15 machines twice in one day was a little tricksome to facilitate).
We started with simple art lessons, just so everyone was up to speed on basic drawing tactics (and also to preserve a little bit of battery life). There are a quick set of ten lessons that I've been doing as long as I've been doing Fish and the Family Festivals which I occasionally rejig a little (mainly in terms of the order I do them in as much as anything) but which teach a huge amount of simple art principles - and confidence - in 30 minutes.
My pic to explain some art principles using the example of a soft, stuffed owl.
One of the kids pics following an example of how to draw a 15 point person. Basically I think I was owned, as some of the youth are wont to say...
Then we moved onto the tablets. And the kids took to them with as much speed and enthusiasm as I could have hoped. We stuck, for the most part, to Autodesk Sketchbook Pro (which might have surprised me a year ago but I've really grown to love as an app). Also, again for the most part, we used Tesco Hudl 7" Android tablets (which to be frank I REALLY should be on commission for and again is a bit of a surprise to me... If you'd told me a year ago that a relatively inexpensive small screen Android tab would be one of my favourites I'd probably have asked if I could see the world through the strange tinted spectacles you were wearing).
I didn't have enough tablets to do a whole group with the Hudl's though so we also used a few iPads and Nintendo 3DS' and the kids themselves brought a range of devices from iPad to Nexus, Samsung to an unbranded Android device I'd not seen before.
All in all a wonderful day and the kids were enormous fun to share the sessions with. More pictures to come, when I get the chance to upload them all.
I did make up a still life for the kids to draw if they found themselves stuck for ideas.
More fool me, really. They were a hive of ideas and came out with some brilliantly crazy things to draw and create and we had a lot of fun talking about how some of the pictures came to be. Both 130 min sessions flew by and, hopefully, a full gallery will be up soon on the Leccy webby...
Also did a bit of a collab draw... One of the participants did a pencil drawing that I especially liked and we took a photo - mainly so I could show her how to colour it in using layers to help. That became this :)
Anyhow: long day, 31 happy kids, 60 pics drawn minimum over 5 different screen formats? Once blog posts done it's screens off and a bit of relax time I think.