Sharratt Silhouettes

These silhouette pieces were inspired by Nick Sharratt's book 'The Foggy Foggy Forest.' This is a really fun, interactive picture book which invites the reader to respond to simple outline shapes rendered in opaque black on translucent plastic pages. My students really enjoyed looking through this book as a group. The illustrations are often funny and contain many surprising little details. After reading it, the young people were keen to create their own dusk or sunset silhouette pieces using tempera paint. The activity really helped students develop their contour drawing skills and also allowed them to see what can be achieved with a limited colour palette.

Art from Old Books

I'm continuing to work through a pile of old books that were set to be thrown out. The students and I have been considering ways in which the printed pages (and the books themselves) could be used as an art material. This session saw students working through a variety or activities. The starter involved making abstract drawings by highlighting certain words on the pages, connecting them, and then filling areas with colour. The next activity was a process I call "unwriting." This involves using a marker pen to black out words on a page, creating prose and poetry from the words left over. The results for this were absurd, hilarious and, in some cases, challenging. Finally, students created figurative collages by ripping up pages and arranging them on to a surface.