Today the session began with a drawing of this...

and i so love the outcome. What was really interesting was to watch Yuval copy the writing - its the first time shes written in English as she has not yet begun learning english letters so she was copying them like any other detail...i think she did a great job!!!!

I gave her a shoe box and several bits and pieces including toilet rolls, cardboard, corks, sticks. egg boxes...and encouraged her to create a 3-d sculpture within the box.

I thought Yuval would feel comfortable using the box as a 'frame' but i think she found the idea of 3-d difficult to understand...and wanted to just stck on the background...

I wonder if i told her to create a freestanding sculpture without a box how she would respond...i would still like to finish this project so we'll see next week.

She had no particular image in mind and continued dipping her hand in the glue and sticking the squares on the page...i decided to let her be free and not restrict her to something more specific...i noticed that she was creating groups with the squares...quite interesting to see how she reacts to a large white space....

I then wanted to explain to Yuval a little further the concept of 3-d. After drawing the toy train last time i noticed she was a little confused... so i asked her to draw a rectangular shaped tin that i put in front of her...

After a second drawing of the tin and going through how it was built, we discussed tones of colour...i asked Yuval to draw a scale of red dots from very dark to very light and to then take the two end colours and the middle one and colour in the tin.

We talked about warm and cool colours...

And then i gave her several pieces of coloured card and asked her to cut out different sized squares from them...and told her to mix them up and stick them down in different groupings of colour - i wanted to demonstrate how we see colours differently depending on their context. Yuval enjoyed cutting and sticking and instantly understood what i was trying to show her...

I think Yuval enjoyed the variety of exercises in this lesson.

Wishing everyone a great weekend..we are considering a trip to the beach.. and next week the introduction of a new collaboration!!!!!!!

We began todays meeting with a quick drawing of one of the girls toy trains..i put the train on an angle...

And then continuing from last week, i put two onions in front of her and asked her to draw their outline and colour them with just dots...and she did a great job!!! We stood back and saw on the red onion how the blue dots merged with the red ones and created a dark purple colour..she seemed happy that this whole pointislism theory worked!

back tomorrow to Blogworld :)

happy Tuesday!

After a long break from our sessions due to illnesses...we are back on track!!

Then i told Yuval that we are going to be looking at colours... we looked at these two paintings 'Woman with the hat' by Matisse and Jasper Johns 'Numbers in colour'...

i asked her what the primary colours are and then we mixed them with oil pastels to create the secondary colours...

i asked her to look closer..but she didnt noticed the dots...i have a book on impressionist artists where they take a closer look at the paintings and there is a section on Seurat with an enlarged area where the dots are very clear...Yuval smiled!

At first she wasnt sure what i was getting at but i took her page to the other side of the room and asked her to squint and she saw how the dots mixed together (especially the stronger blue and red ones..) and she smiled again!

We ran out of time but will continue next week. It was a great session...fun for Yuval, a kind of magic!

After both Yuval and i were sick for the past weeks, we finally met yesterday! We began with a drawing of a soap dispenser...

And then i wanted to continue on from last lesson about mosaics...i talked about the artist Sergeev Ruslan who builds mosaic covered sculptures like this massive grasshopper where we live - again i bring in the connection to something Yuval is very familiar with.

She even went on to tell me about his many lion sculptures in Jerusalem...

I showed her more pictures of masaic work and emphasised the use of colour and light and shadow..and then we went on to finished her ladybird. I actually joined her (something i dont usually do) and i think it was great to do something together as a team.

I love the way it turned out! I noticed that while we were tearing and sticking she learnt that for the curves you need smaller pieces and that playing with different colours and textures creates different effects.

We began this lesson with the drawing of a pot..we are now in a routine where Yuval doesnt ask any questions...she knows we start with a quick life drawing with shadow.

I know how much Yuval loves sticking down papers so this week i showed her this picture...

definitely fun and relaxing...

Today, Yuval chose what she wanted to draw for the life drawing at the beginning of the lesson...she chose an old paper mache model of mine - a tall figure. She did the first drawing and i asked her to add the shadow - tall, that went up the wall...

she got a little confused and started another drawing...

...this time adding the shadow in a pretty accurate way. Its so interesting to see how their minds work and a lot of the time want to draw what they 'think' it should be and not what they actually see!

Then we changed direction, and i took out these pictures of Geargia O'Keefe to show Yuval.

I love the way she got the curve of the leaves. Although she was a little worried in the beginning, she quite enjoyed the drawing in the end.

And then i asked her to do another one - it happens every week and every time she does a second drawing she notices more details - this is wonderful.. I think she did a fantastic drawing with the angle of the spout and the shadow.

Lots of fun!!