By Mostyn de Beer

Mostyn de Beer is an experienced artist educator based in Sweden. Mostyn is especially interested in environmental art; his practice investigates links between creating art and environmental education. In this post (the first in a series) Mostyn talks about his experience of making sculptures from natural materials, and contemplates how they can help participants connect to the natural world.

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AccessArt is a UK Charity and we believe everyone has the right to be creative. AccessArt provides inspiration to help us all reach our creative potential.

The “Drawing and Poetry” In the Studio event explores connections between drawing and the written word.

Drawing can often take place in an observational context, where we draw what we see in front of us. In this session, we will use a poem as a starting point, and explore ways to really see it, and to draw the imagery and feelings it evokes.

The aim is to provide exciting starting points to explore a more fluid and experimental approach to drawing.

Find the recording of the session below.

Explore resources connecting drawing and poetry:

found poetry

poetry comics

poetry and printing

puzzle purses

imagery and poetry

illustrating the jabberwocky

set design – responding to text

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Pathway: using natural materials to make images

This is featured in the ‘Using Natural Materials to Make Images’ pathway

Talking Points: What is a cyanotype

Talking Points: Anna Atkins

Fearful For The “Lost Generation” Existing In An Anxious Society Who Need to “Catch-Up”?

Breath. We can step outside the “fear breeds anxiety breeds more fear and more anxiety” cycle.

We have a powerful tool at our disposal to help heal, build confidence and empower. Our own Creativity.

Let’s not perpetuate the “lost generation” myth. These children are unique but not lost. The more we sell the message of the lost generation, the more we perpetuate fear and anxiety. Instead of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of the “lost generation” let’s be brave and create a “nourished generation”.

We have fingers, heads and hearts. We have senses and emotions. We have imaginations. This generation does not need to catch-up to where they would have been – that is going backwards, instead they need to be enabled to leap forwards through hands, heads and hearts and explore their place in the world, supported by families, teachers and schools who tell them it is safe to do so. Let’s make primary schools a place where creativity can be supported and nourished and children can be enabled to discover their ability to transform the world about them.

We are more creative as a species than we are currently led to believe. Intrinsically, inherently, creative. We need only look back at history to see that, and we value it as an adult skill and yet still many teachers in many schools struggle to find time to invest in the creativity of their pupils without huge effort or apology.

We do not need to worry that it is an either OR scenario. Enabling these children to spend time exploring their creativity will NOT detract from their ability to succeed in “academic subjects” (and that term is a whole other conversation). Quite the opposite; schools where creativity flourishes demonstrate that motivation, ownership of learning and outcomes in other subject areas flourish too. This is not fuzzy thinking where we create a cossetted world full of play and fun (though why not?). Creative thought and action is hard work; you have to be brave to explore, think really hard, learn new skills, battle with materials, take risks, put yourself on the line, figure out what you think, express yourself, share with others, change the world. We’re talking about enabling people to be brave, positive, productive, and act for the benefit of society as well as for the individual. Don’t worry, it won’t be easy. Finger painting isn’t all fun you know.

Let’s switch the message we are telling our children. We are stronger than we perhaps think. If we create a dialogue around this generation of loss, we make them less then. Instead let’s use the power we all have – our creativity – to climb back up. Not catch-up – but catch-on.

So, let’s step back, take a breath, and create a nourished generation, lavished with time to draw, paint, print, make, build, photograph, write, dance, make music and most all – be empowered to explore the world and produce our own creative response. Teachers too.

Thank you to all the teachers in school who know how important creativity is to pupils, and who work long and hard to provide stimulating creative opportunities for their pupils 🙂

Inspirational Case Studies

What did my child make with their hands this week?

Planning a creative curriculum

AccessArt Exemplar & progression Plans

Creativity Connects, Empowers, Transforms

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Pathway: 2D Drawing to 3D Making

This is featured in the ‘2D Drawing to 3D Making’ pathway

Talking Points: Packaging Design

What is Typography

To coincide with The Human Touch, an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, AccessArt has collated a collection of resources to help pupils and teachers explore the sense of touch in making art. 

The exhibition explore how we use our hands to leave traces, make art and symbolise emotion and intention. The resources below can be used as starting points to explore ideas about our sense of touch in the classroom or studio.

Drawing & Mark Making

Making “Feely” Drawings

See the Resource

Nest

See the Resource

Doodle Ball

See the Resource

Drawing Like a Caveman

See the Resource

Painting with Plasticine

See the Resource

Hands, Feet, Flowers

See the Resource

Clay

Quick Clay Sketches

See the Resource

Sensing Form

See the Resource

Making Mini Food

See the Resource

Painted Clay

See the Resource

Fruit Pinch Pot

See the Resource

Beyond Clay

Hand Casts

See the Resource

Worry Dolls

See the Resource

Paper Bowls

See the Resource

Wave Bowls

See the Resource

The “Drawing and Performance” In the Studio event explores connections between drawing and movement. 

Drawing is often seen as a passive activity which takes place whilst we are seated; a process of making marks with a pencil whilst moving from the wrist. 

But drawing CAN be a much more physical activity – an activity which involves making marks on a much larger scale with materials other than pencils to create artwork which we approach with our whole body, and verges on performance both in terms of how drawings are made and how they are viewed.

Drawing can also of course be inspired BY performance itself – dance, film, theatre and tv can all provide exciting starting points to explore a more fluid and experimental approach to drawing. 

Find the recording of the session below.

Drawing dancers by Tobi Meuwissen

Choose stills from the video above, drawing them in panels (rectangles), to create a sequence of drawings

Draw as you watch the above video, making marks on the paper and layering image over image. Take what you need form the video, leave out what you don’t need. 

drawing in the dark

using a tablet

impressability project

dressing up as a fossil

Tape, projectors, wicki sticks

drawing with tape on walls

shadow puppets

shadow puppets and whiteboards

drawing with tape on walls

painting the storm

missing you

Drawing in space

Drawing dancers by Tobi Meuwissen

The AccessArt Prompt Cards are a series of very short drawing prompts which can be used in a wide variety of situations. You can download the prompts below as a PDF.

Find the recording of the In The Studio session focusing on AccessArt’s Prompt Cards below.

DOWNLOAD THE ACCESSART PROMPT CARDS PDF

Using the Drawing Prompts as a Warm Up

The Drawing Prompts are a great way to help learners be open about what drawing is and how they make marks on a page. 

Before you work with the drawing cards, consider enabling learners to understand how they hold a pencil, how much pressure they apply, and how they move their arm will effect the marks they make. See Anatomy of a Pencil resource here. 

moving and drawing

teenagers make their own prompt cards

Anatomy of a pencil

Using the Drawing Prompts as an Aid to Well Being

The resources below share how you might use the Drawing Prompts to help learners develop their appreciation of drawing in the “now” – a useful skill to help build a sense of well being.

drawing as a tool for mindfulness

arts and minds

Using the Drawing Prompts as an Aid to Exploring

In the resource below, the AccessArt Drawing prompts were used as a way to help teachers (or learners of any age) explore artwork made by others (in this case an exhibition of the work by Degas at the Fitzwilliam Museum). The drawing prompts help learners collect information in a visual way and help make an individual creative resource.

Drawing in a museum or gallery

The Progression Plan for Making below, is taken from our more comprehensive Progression Plan here.

Click on the image below to launch the PowerPoint, and then click on the photos within the PowerPoint to link to resources. Please note the resources included are for suggestion only, there are many more resources available on AccessArt. 

See This Resource Used In Schools…

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Pathway: Stick Transformation project

This is featured in the ‘Stick Transformation Project’ pathway

AccessArt is really pleased to welcome Tobi Meuwissen to our team! Tobi is a recent graduate from Manchester School of Art, where she gained a First Class BA (Hons) in Illustration with Animation. 

Tobi will be working with artists and educators to help create exciting content for AccessArt, and also helping with admin, membership and marketing. 

Tobi is a talented artist and communicator and we think she will be a real asset to the team. 

“I can’t wait to get started with the AccessArt team, trustees and members!”

Tobi Meuwissen

By Jo Blaker

Sketchbooks are powerful tools. Enjoy these three videos in which Jo Blaker shares why sketchbooks have secret powers.

*If you are having issues viewing videos it may be due to your schools firewall or your cookie selection. Please check with your IT department.*

Sketchbook Powers Number 1 & 2

Secret powers numbers 1 and 2: Jo describes how sketchbooks can be a door into a hidden world, and a place to explore what you feel like as a person.

Sketchbook Power Number 3

Secret power number 2: Sketchbooks can be a weapon; a weapon you can use to fight boredom, ease anxiety, and find gratitude.

Sketchbook Power Number 4

Secret power numbers 4: Sketchbooks can be a laboratory – a safe place to experiment, test and discover.

Last week we looked at how we can use sound to help develop our mark making in a very intuitive way. Today we are going to look at how we can develop our mark making skills in a slightly more analytical way – through examining the work of other artists. By doing this, and by using our new mark-making vocabulary in the drawings we make, we can begin to understand how different types of marks create personality and meaning in our drawings.

As with all the AccessArt resources, we want to help learners aim high, but through a series of small steps. And at each of the steps we ensure we are encouraging open-ended, creative experiences so that the learning is really owned by the learner.

Find the recording of the In The Studio session exploring diverse mark-making below.

Activities which help learners identify new marks…

Finding marks through artists

thoughtful mark making

drawing clouds and mark making

Typography for children

Monoprint with Oil Pastel

Flat Yet Sculptural making

Making Sculptural Wild Things

See This Resource Used In Schools

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Pathway: Typography and Maps

This is featured in the ‘Typography and Maps’ pathway

Pathway: Cloth, thread, paint

This is featured in the ‘Cloth, Thread, Paint’ pathway

Session Recording: Finding Marks Made by Artists

What is the connection between sound and mark making, and how can we use one to enable an exploration in the other?

At it’s most essential, drawing is the result of our bodies moving while we hold some kind of drawing tool. How we move while we draw (how fast, how slow, how carefully, how chaotically) is not something we often consider – we are usually too busy looking at our drawing on the page.

The sounds around us mark and describe the passing of time: birdsong, traffic, machinery, speech, music. Each sound reverberates through our body, and we react, at some level, to everything we hear.
Sound is energy, and our bodies respond with movement – sometimes on a micro scale (a tap of a finger) sometimes through the whole body (we dance).

How can sound become a gesture on the page? The exercises and resources below explore how we can use sound to create energy, rhythm and movement which transform through our body and through the drawing material into mark making on the page.

Find the recording of the Zoom session exploring sound and movement below.

Although not made in response to sound, the work of Japanese artist Tomoko Kawao shows how drawing relies on movement of the body in response to a stimulus. Even when we draw from the wrist with a fine drawing material, the movements we make, the pressure we apply, and our empathy with the material, dictates the marks we make.

mark making and sound

Painting the storm

Drawing to a metronome

Drawing in the dark

Inspired by Miro

a cheerful orchestra

Sketchbooks and Performance