Once again, loads of very creative work created during the Easter Term, congratulations to all who participated. I am attaching some images of the work created, if you are not included it is because you ran off before I had a chance to photograph you with your work. I teach Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 4pm till 6pm, all of these classes are mixed children’s classes ranging from 6 years of age up to 12 years of age. The Wednesday class from 4pm till 6pm is the advanced mid-week class, this is created for students who understand the basics of drawing and painting and are ready to advance on to the next level.
I teach art all day on Saturday from 9am till 6pm, these classes are all advanced classes, here the students learn how to draw and paint more complex art works. There are four Saturday classes, each class is a different level, the 4pm till 6pm is the first level, the 9am till 11am class is the second level, the 11;15 to 1;15 the next level and the 1;30 to 3;30 class the most advanced class, again you will see the difference in the level of technique when I post up the images.
Lets start with the mid-week classes. At the beginning of each class the students are given a selection of images and it is up to them to choose which image that they would like to learn how to paint and draw. As you can see animals are a favourite, but I do include landscapes, how to draw trees, grass, mountains, rivers, houses and once the students learn how to properly draw a human figure, they are also included. The students use their fingers a lot to paint, but I also teach them how to paint with Fan brushes, great for painting leaves on trees and grass, Pallet Knives, great for painting rocks, mountains and the trunks of trees, Flat Brushes and small brushes.
Portraits are one of the areas always included in the term, for if a student can paint a portrait they will have no problem painting any seascape, landscape of urban scape, as the portrait contains all aspects of drawing and painting, including perspective and tone.
Clay, last week of the term.
Saturday Class – Advanced
As you can see the technique is much more advanced than the mid-week classes. The students are encouraged to work in A2 Sketch Pads, so as they can start creating a portfolio, which is very useful when seeing how their work advances through the classes and keeping a record on the proper way to draw portraits, landscapes and seascapes. The last day of each term, the term lasting 6 weeks, is a Clay Day where the students model clay. All the students love modelling clay and I believe that it is very useful for the students to learn how to model clay as it teaches them form.
Saturday Advanced class 1:30 to 3:30
The 1:30 to 3:30 class on Saturday is the most advanced class. In this class the students are extremely competent in all forms of painting, drawing and modelling. In this class the students pick what they want to paint themselves, so they are all working individually, creating their own work. The following are examples of the work created.
A lot of work was created this Spring Term, with all of the students trying to get a piece ready for The Texaco Children’s Art Competition. A lot of effort was put into how to create a good Portrait. Portraiture is the Gold Cup of Art, why so you may ask, it is because it has everything. It has foreshortening, tone, perspective, form, everything has to be perfect and if it is not, it is very obvious that it is incorrect. I include portraiture into all of the groups, the young children only do portraits once every term, the older children and teenagers were doing portraits for all 7 weeks. As the portrait had to be broken down into sections, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, skin tone, hair, thats just the beginning. Then there is perspective, but that is not included until the students get to grips with all aspects of non perspective portraits. Everything in art is about practice, practice and more practice, if the students want to become better they have to practice.
The following two Portraits were submitted to The Texaco Children’s Art Competition in the highest category, they are 17 and 16 years of age and I must say that their portraits are fabulous.
As the students become extremely good at creating portraits, I encourage them to take on more ambitious works, to start introducing creativity and start looking how their portrait can be gallery worthy.
Now it is not that I do not think that the other students work is not equally as fabulous, they are terrific for their age groups, the students work extremely hard on their portraits and the proof is with a bit of hard work, concentration and determination, a great portrait can be achieved, no matter what age you are.
Now for the other areas, the more fun stuff.
A lot of animals were painted, the students get a choice of a selection of images that they can learn how to paint. I do not mind what we paint in the art class, dogs, pigs, horses, birds, trees, seascapes, people, town scapes. It makes no difference to me as the students are constantly learning how to use colour, tone, how to break the painting down into shapes, how to use perspective and disappearing points. There are many benefits of painting for children including sensory development, colour learning, fine motor development, exercising creativity, being able to express emotions and building self esteem. Painting is also a great activity to help teach concepts like shapes and form in a fun and engaging way.
Finally Clay.
The students love modelling clay, from the very young to the very old.
Clay is one medium that promotes creativity. It is especially beneficial to young people – it helps promote self-confidence, encourages self-expression and develops problem-solving skills. Makes the students look at the form of the animal, how many legs has the animal, where are its ears positioned, on the top or side of the head, where is the tail positioned. How do you create eyes, nose, ears and mouth. How do you create hair. Probably one of the most important creative process when modelling clay how do you make your clay model personal to you.
This is just a collection of photographs on the development of a painting in the second art class on Saturday.
Eyes, make sure that the pupils and iris are circular, make sure that you have space for the whites in the eyes and that you put in the tear duct on inside of the eye.
Skin tone, add your skin tones to around the eyes and nose, make sure you have all three skin tones working.
I used a brown and black chalk for the darker skin tones. The chalk pastels used were Inscribe pastels.
Skin tones, continued throughout the face. The highest points of the face have to have the lightest skin tones, the highest points are the nose, chin, cheeks and forehead.
Add the hair using a stiff brush, which will create a hair like mark, make sure you have all the three tones working. brown, black and white.
Lips, her lips are fairly big both the top and bottom are the same size. The darkest tone is in the middle of the lips, make sure you have all tones working, red, flesh tone, black and white.
Children’s Art Classes, Monday to Friday – 4pm till 6pm
Congratulations to everyone who participated in Ennis Art School Christmas term, once more excellent work was created. The following are examples of some of the work created. This term was predominately a painting term, where the students learned how to draw and paint, dogs, cats, donkeys, Fox’s, Ducks, trees, seascape with a lighthouse, a teddy bear, portraits and of course the famous man himself Father Christmas. In the children’s art classes the emphasis is placed on how to look at all objects in terms of shape. Parents say to me “Did my child really paint or draw what they bring home by themselves” . Now every image can be broken down into shapes.
The above Teddy is just a series of ovals, large oval for the head, smaller oval for the body and two semi circles for the feet. It becomes very easy then for the children to paint anything. All a child needs is to be able to draw a circle, oval, square, rectangle semicircle and parallel lines and practically any subject can be drawn or painted. Everything else after that is tone, but it is very important to get the drawing first.
The students get a choice of at least 7 images from them to choose as to which image that would like to learn how to draw and paint. I believe that it is important that the students choose themselves as in what they would like to learn how to paint, at least then they have an interest, although usually there is always some description of an animal included. The students love drawing all forms of animals, portraits are not a big hit, but it is a very important area and the children need to learn how to draw a successful portrait, although this may take years for this to happen, but it does happen.
The above portraits are created by young children, you can see how as they progress the portraits becoming better, but it is all practice. Like any subject in order to become better you have to practice. If you were a swimmer you would do lengths in the pool to perfect technique, the same applies to art, practice and time makes perfect.
Ashna Raman, displaying her prize winning entry for Texaco 2021
Pandas,
Teenage Art Work, Saturday 9am till 6pm.
The Advanced classes all take place on Saturday, first class beginning at 9am, last class finishing at 6pm. In the advanced classes the execution of the work slows down, the students do not finish in one class but continue into following weeks, so some of the paintings can take up to 3 weeks to complete. The urban scape where the students painted Lahinch, a seaside town in Co Clare, took three weeks to complete as the students had to draw out the buildings, roads, paths, rocks, walls and sea in perspective and than paint the buildings incorporating windows and doors. The students also completed two winter landscapes where they had to learn how to paint deciduous and evergreen trees with snow, water polar bears and deers. We also started on self portraits, as portraiture is the Gold Cup of art and the students will be submitting for The Texaco Children’s Art Competition in February.
Advanced Teenage Class
In the advanced Teenage Class the students can take up to a whole term to finish one painting. The students in this group are can paint, draw and model everything and anything. There technique in painting and drawing is an extremely high level and I recommend them to businesses in town for commercial art work.
Modelling Clay.
The students love to model clay and it is a great medium for the students to learn form, how the face is created and modelled and the over all shape modelling animals.
Once again congratulations to everyone who completed the Halloween Term & Camp, great work once more created. I am posting a collection of the work created, please do not be offended if you are not included as you probably ran out the door before I could photo your work. A lot of work was created during the last term, we concentrated a lot on painting, so the students learned a lot about structure of a painting, how it is broken down into background, midground and foreground. How to paint trees, disappearing points, how to paint leaves on the trees, using different materials. Once more a lot of animals were painted, cows, horses, cats, donkeys and dogs. Learning how to paint animals can be very informative as the students learn all about tone and composition. We also did seascapes, where the students learned how to create disappearing points in the horizon, how to paint waves, sand and rocks. How to draw and paint the human figure was also a large section in this term, the students learned how to break down the figure into easily created compositions of ovals and how the head goes 6 times into the body, which can than be broken up into shoulders, trunk and pelvis with arms and legs.
Halloween Camp – Monday to Friday 9am till 12 noon
All the camps run on a three hourly basis over Monday to Friday. The camps are broken down into the following, Monday – Drawing composition and tone. Tuesday – How to draw a portrait of yourself, Wednesday how to paint a seascape, landscape, Thursday how to model clay, Friday – usually we do a painting and then the students decide what they want to do for the remaining time. The camps are usually themed.
Children’s Classes- From 6 years of age to 12, Tuesday to Friday 4pm till 6pm
Improvers class – Saturday 9am till 11am and Saturday 4pm till 6pm
Once the students understand the concept of tone, composition, how to compose a portrait, how to paint seascapes, landscapes and urban scapes, they are then moved up to the Saturday Improvers classes. In this class the structures of the paintings and drawings become harder and the layering becomes more intense. Once more a lot of work was created and the following are some examples of the work created. The Saturday classes are broken up into 4 categories, Improvers, Intermediate, Advanced and Graduate Levels. The Improvers are at the beginning of their art learning stage while the Graduate Levels, know it all they can draw and paint anything. At Ennis Art School, the emphasis is on technique, so the students learn all about the different techniques in drawing composition and painting, by the time they are finished they are absolutely brilliant artists. The following images are paintings and drawings from Improvers to Advanced Levels.
Advanced Class
Here the students start to slow down, and look at composition and layering. The following painting took the students three weeks to complete as they had to work the layers from the front of the painting backwards, so the lillie pods had to be in the foreground the fish had to be in the midground and the pebbles had to be positioned in the background.
How to model Clay, this is a very important area and one that all the students love, no matter what age. Craft is one of the areas on the Leaving Certificate Art Module and Clay is one of the areas represented.
Graduate Class
The students in the Graduate Class, have to create their own composition of painting. These paintings have to be of complex, taking in all aspects of design, tone and composition. There is no time limit for completion.
Texaco Children’s Art Competition
We apply for Texaco childrens art competition every year as I do believe it is important that the students realise how good their peers are in the art realm, therefore creating an incentive for them to improve their skills and compositions. This year we had one Highly Recommended, congratulations to Ashna on a great drawing.
Adult class – Wednesday morning
I teach adults on a Wednesday morning. In this class we can do fairly enough anything. All aspects of painting are taught here, everything from Seascapes to Landscapes to Still life.
Once more congratulations to everyone who attended the Summer Art Camps at Ennis Art School. The following is a celection of images taken during the camps. The camps ar five days long and each day a new decipline is examined and practiced.
Day 1. Drawing
For day one we look at form, how an image is can be broken down into triangles, rectangles, ovals, circles and squares. We then proceed to draw the image, we can Freehand draw the images, or we can use scaled drawings. I try to use both areas as it is important for the students to learn both styles of drawing. We primarily draw with chalk pastels, the brand that I use is Inscribe as I find that the quality and colour of the pastels is very high.
The Students choose from an array of images, and they pick which image that they would like to learn how to draw, as you can see the most popular images are dogs, cows, horses and cats.
Day 2 -Portraits
Portraits are a very important area in art, as I keep telling the students, if you can do a good portrait well then you can paint and draw anything. Portraiture wins all the childrens art competitions and if the students want to get a H1 for their Leaving Cert well then Portraiture is the way to go. Why is the Portrait so important, it is because it has every aspect of drawing, it has composition, tone and perspective and this is just a straight forward frontal portrait. as I say to the students if they learn anything is how to do a good portrait. The students learn, facial composition, how their face differs from others, how to draw eyes, nose, mouth, hair and ears.
Day 3 – Painting
Here the students learn, composition of paintings, how they are broken down into foreground, midground and background. How colour works together, how to create tone using colour. When we are starting our painting the most important aspect is to break the painting in to foreground, midground and background and then to draw in the centre character and work from there.
Day 4 – Clay
The students love working with Clay, but here again I teach them how to model the clay correctly as like every aspect of art there is a correct way to do everything. Usually the students learn how to model animals, again it is there choice
Day 5 – Last day of the Camp, for day 5 the students pick what they want to do, usually its painting and clay.
Teenage/Improvers Art Camp
In the afternoon I run Teenage/Improvers Art Camps, these camps are suitable for students who know the basics of all aspects of art and just want to upgrade their skills and create work that they would not have the opportunity to do themselves.
This is an assortment of other paintings created.
So for these camps the students did a painting of a Coke Can, a still life where they personalised their Coke Can’s.
They also did a painting of a charging Elephant in a grassland.
Styalised Portraits
Ducks
Animation Camp’s
The Animation Camp’s are limited to five students as then they all get to use their own Mac. The programmes that the student’s use to create the animations are Photoshop, Director and iMovies. It is very important for students to learn how to draw electronically on iPads and drawing pads, as everything is designed on the computer. The main electronic drawing tool that is used in these animation camps are Wocem, the software that we use is Photoshop, but Procreate is also used on the iPad. The animation software that is used is Director we use iMovies for photograph and film manipulation.
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