Category Archives: Young Artists and Writers Club

Young Artist’s Club: The Bayeux Tapestry

September 24, 2017Young Artists and Writers Clubyoung artists club

The Bayeux Tapestry is a truly fascinating piece of both history and art. Created around 1070 AD (really!) and nearly 230 feet long (yes really!!), it is an embroidered tapestry that depicts the Norman conquest of England. If you’re interested in learning more I highly recommend this YouTube video explaining the tapestry in further detail (it’s meant for school groups so there’s also some excellent attempts at grade-school humor, haha).

So what did our Young Artist’s Club do to explore the Bayeux Tapestry? Well a whole lot of embroidery, naturally!

We also did some other fabric art, including making no-sew pillows out of t-shirts, and decorating cloth duffle bags.

Finally, our club members drew their own history-inspired tapestries on long sheets of paper; they could do as many scenes as they wanted since the papers were so long!

I think this was an incredibly interesting piece to learn about; I can’t recommend the above YouTube video enough.

If you’re in the Austin area and want to join our Young Artist’s Club you totally should! Check out our website for info on the next meeting!

Young Artist’s Club: JB and Kel Brown

August 15, 2017Young Artists and Writers ClubAustin, hip-hop, Music, painter, painting

At this Young Artist’s Club we explored the work of some local artists: twin brothers JB and Kel Brown. JB is a hip-hop artist; Kel is a painter. But they work together, music influencing painting and vice versa. Not only did our members get to learn about these awesome local artists, but we also explored the collaborative power of music and art.

(If you’re interested in more info on the Brown brothers, you can check out this great interview, or this really neat video.)

To start the day, we decorated maracas, and made rainsticks:

Then, in the spirit of the Brown brothers, we collaborated on some guitar designs:

We took a quick snack break (keeping with our musical theme):

Then each member got to design their own album cover while listening to the music of their choice. They had to choose what music to listen to during their creative process, whether they’d do a realistic or abstract piece for their album cover, and then what medium to use.

Our club members loved the connection they got from learning about artists in their own city. It was a very empowering Saturday!

Want to join us? There’s more info on our Young Artist’s Club on our website.

Hopefully you’ll come create with us soon!

Young Artists Club: Milton Bradley

May 25, 2017Young Artists and Writers Clubboard games, game design, games, group art project, group craft, group craft project, Milton Bradley

Our Young Artists Club really got their game-faces on for this one! (I couldn’t help myself! ;-))

We had a day of exploring Milton Bradley a few weeks ago, playing some classic games and then making our own board games. Our Young Artists got to:

Design game pieces out of clay:

Create large spinners for that element of chance:

A create their board game boards on which to play!

Our Young Artists had so much fun coming up with the ideas and creating their game boards. Have you every made up a game? What was it like? We’d love to hear from all of you creative folks!

Young Artist’s Club: Aboriginal Art

December 9, 2016Young Artists and Writers ClubAboriginal art, boxes, mask, masks, nature art, paint, wearable art

Our Young Artist’s Club studied aboriginal art last month. And what a sight to see their aboriginal masks!

Our young artist’s took cardboard boxes and paint, and engineered large, over-the-shoulder-style head masks. They could choose to embody their spirit animal, a nature object, or someone they wished to honor. Check them out!

We had a cat:

A dog (whose artist is inside, poking his fingers out of the eye holes to show you how he can see out):

And a squid, complete with fluttery, paper tentacles!

If you made a large-scale mask, what would you make? I think something about weather would be really cool!

Young Artists Club: Frida Kahlo

November 6, 2016Young Artists and Writers ClubDay of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, Frida Kahlo, group art project, group craft, group craft project, Kahlo, mask, Sugar skull

Our club members loved learning about Frida Kahlo!

We combined learning about Frida Kahlo with some Dia de los Muertos activities. We decorated sugar skulls:

made Dia de los Muertos masks:

and made altars to our loved ones who’ve passed:

It’s hard to do our Young Artist’s Club justice with just pictures and a description; if you’re in Austin and in First Grade or older you’re welcome to join us! Call Kaye at 512-807-6863 to enroll.

Did you celebrate Day of the Dead? Send us pictures if you did, we’d love to see!

Young Artists Club: Andy Warhol

July 7, 2016Young Artists and Writers ClubAndy Warhol, boxes, Pop Art, printmaking, screenprinting, Warhol

Our Young Artist’s Club studied Andy Warhol last month! And, as befitting an artist with such varied work, our club members got to explore Pop Art in several different activities.

As one of the first activities of the day, our club members made Warhol Boxes. Warhol built boxes to look like cartons of popular food items. They were so realistic, he even got sued for the work! Our club members created boxes of brands they enjoy or admire.

We made Warhol Handprints:

And Warhol Flowers:

And for our themed snack we focused on re-imagining popular icons. We transformed 2 vanilla wafers and a Girl Scout mint cookie into a mini burger, and added gel icing in various colors as lettuce, mustard, cheese, and ketchup. Our club members loved it!

Here’s to art, in all its tasty permutations!

Young Artists Club: Leonardo DaVinci

June 3, 2016Young Artists and Writers ClubCharcoal sketching, DaVinci, Inventions, Leonardo DaVinci, Mirror writing

Our Young Artists Club recently studied Leonardo DaVinci! As he’s the definition of a Renaissance Man, our club members had tons of activities to explore his works and techniques. Here are just some of them!

1. Supper Time! Depict a supper with friends. Tell us about your guests from their clothing, gestures, and expressions.

2. Invent This! Depict an invention that solves a problem or creates a possibility. Describe your invention in mirror writing.

3. Smile! Create a Mona-Lisa styled portrait of someone you know. Include a related background.

4. Drawing Takes Muscle: Draw your hands, your foot, or your knee. Notice the underlying muscles. Draw what you see, now what you expect. (We also had an anatomy book they could reference for this!)

Besides these, there were stations set up with clay (DaVinci was a sculptor, after all!) and charcoal, to really get a glimpse at the modeling and sketching, preparatory parts of these artworks. AND we played around with this website, that will take a phrase and turn it into DaVinci’s distinctive mirror writing style!

Here’s some of our club members in action!

A full day of DaVinci!

Young Artists Club: Milton Glaser

May 22, 2016Young Artists and Writers Clubfabric paint, Milton Glaser, negative space, t-shirt, t-shirt art, t-shirts

Our Young Artist’s Club learned about the work of Milton Glaser recently. Milton Glaser, the American graphic artist best known for designing the “I <3 NY” logo, really inspired our members with his bold combinations of image and text.

To explore this combination themselves they designed t-shirts. They drew their designs on paper, cut them out, laid them out on their shirt, and sprayed fabric paint over the design.

Because of the way this technique worked, we also talked about positive and negative space in design, how spraying the paint around their stencil (the positive space) meant the paint showed the design outline via the negative space. Our club members really enjoyed it!

If you’re in the Austin area come join us one Saturday! Info about the next meeting is always up at our website: http://www.aspaciousplace.com/.

Create Your Own Comic Book Heroes

April 9, 2016Young Artists and Writers ClubChristopher Nolan, comic books, comics, DC universe, Joss Whedon, Marvel universe, superheroes

Comics!

Comics have really come into our everyday entertainment lives, haven’t they? Or at least comic book heroes and heroines have. I’m loving all of the Marvel and DC movies and TV shows these days!

Our Young Artists and Young Writers Clubs explored both universes recently, inventing their own superheroes, their arch-nemeses, their cities, their super strengths and weaknesses, their costumes… so much fun to create a whole world with so many possibilities.

They watched clips of some of the recent movie incarnations of famous comic book characters, and learned a bit about the writer/directors Joss Whedon and Christopher Nolan. It was neat to directly compare their work:

How would the participants describe each ones style?
Why did they think that style did or did not go with a particular hero?
What aspects of these styles would they choose to incorporate into their own superhero stories?

Check out some of their creations!

Here’s some of the superhero logos they created, taking inspiration from examples of other comic book fonts: