Thursday 7 August 2008

stories without words

Did a painting workshop today with mainly 8 year olds for a summer school. It was nerve wracking for more than one reason - I've never run a workshop with such young children (I was actually relieved that the class for 5 yr olds was cancelled!), and I also don't really feel qualified to 'teach' painting....even to children. I thought we'd start off with the colour wheel, but managed to refer to secondary colours as tertiary and then the teacher had to point out that I'd cocked it up already and I'd only just started. An early set back but after that to be fair I think it went really well - the kids were very sweet, really focussed especially considering at 8 you wouldn't often paint for 5 hours on the trot. Right at the end of the day they went a bit mad painting each other but the very last painting that came out of that is brilliant. They all shared their stories and paintings at the end - I've made a slide show of the paintings and the captions tell their stories. Sad that after all that I came away feeling pretty disappointed - not with the kids, but with the arrangement - I didn't get paid (although JR did yesterday for the same deal so what's with my cheque?), and the school still owes my for the CP work which is months ago. It felt like MC was holding out on me and it kind of spoilt the day a bit.

Had nice chat to M and JR when I got back and the liked the work. They've been over to have tea with Steve Hurst - they had a lovely time and all three totally loving talking wall to wall sculpture techniques! M getting more confident now about the Portugal commission which is great.

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