Part C

Progress Diary

Art Workshop

Workshop Day 1 - 10^th August 2021

I didn’t have my lesson today, but I had to help the others. Varya did an introduction to watercolour, and the kids learned how to draw flowers. We came up with the idea halfway through the lesson to teach them to paint vines and leaves, and they made a final picture, where they hid an object in the vines and flowers. The kids enjoyed it. The next lesson was taught by Hannah. She did a lesson on how to draw a Panda using charcoal. The kids enjoyed getting a bit messy with the charcoal and experimenting with willow and compressed charcoal. I think for tomorrow, I need to give some examples to the children on what designs they want for the pots. Was a little late to this session, so need to improve on punctuality.

Workshop Day 2 - 11^th August 2021

Was on time today! Today was my workshop. The children were decorating plant pots with acrylic paint. First, they put on a base layer of a colour of their choice. Many of the children did Pikachu, so we needed a lot of yellow! While I dried their base layers with a hairdryer, the others played a game with the children to keep them busy. Once all the base layers were dry, the children added the detail. Most children added the face on their Pickachu pots, and the others did flowers and hearts. I think the children enjoyed it overall, as it wasn’t on paper, but on a 3D object. Finally, Amy did her lesson on how to draw a cat with oil pastel. The kids enjoyed it, as they got to choose the colours for their cat and a name for it.

Overall, I think both days of lessons went very well. I enjoyed teaching the children at The Brett Foundation, and they enjoyed learning art as well !

A summary of what happened at the workshops can be found in the video below.

Online Teaching

I had never recorded a video to be put on YouTube before, so this was a new concept to me. First, I had to come up with an idea for what to teach. I had a few ideas, but eventually, I went with a sunset landscape with palm leaf silhouettes. First, I had to figure out the steps, and how to break them down.

1. First, take a big brush and add a thick layer of red paint at the top.

2. Then take some orange paint. Slightly overlap your brush with the border of the red section to blend it. Continue to paint the orange section.

3. Take some yellow paint, and again slightly overlap your brush with the border of the orange section to blend it. Then continue to the end of the paper.

4. While the yellow is still wet, add a small white circle to the middle of the yellow section for the sun.

5. When it has dried, take some dilute acrylic paint on your small round brush, and draw the stem and give the impression of palm leaves.

6. Take a flat brush or fan brush and paint on some more detailed leaves.

7. Finally, Add some birds with black paint.

After a number of trial paintings, I decided that this might take too long, so I got rid of steps 4 and 7. I also decided to use red instead of pink, as I preferred it that way.

I then started to record the sections for my video. I filmed each step as one section and then edited them all together. I also recorded the audios separately and edited them on top.

The link to the final video is here.

Art Awareness

For the Art awareness task, we were asked to create a video about an art event or venue. I had done an article on Voice Magazine about the Green Path open-air gallery in Colombo. (https://www.voicemag.uk/review/9204/the-green-path-the-open-air-art-gallery-in-colombo-sri-lanka). I decided to base my video on this, as I knew a lot about it. I first wrote a script of what I was going to say, and then start recording. I recorded in sections again, as it was easier for me to not make mistakes. I then found some pictures from my article and edited them over to the top of the audio. I then sent it to the project leader to be edited further.

The link to the final video is here.

Why Art (and Why Art Education)

This is the project that I lead. I needed to create a video on the benefits of Art, which had to include the opinions of parents of Artspiration students, as to why they think art has benefited their children. First, I experimented with different editing software, to see which I liked the best. I found Lightworks the easiest to use, so I chose this to make my videos. I first asked the members of my team to ask their parents to record audio answering the question ‘How has Art benefited your child’ I made an example with my mum on what to say, and then sent these out to the parents, so they had a rough on what to say. I also ask them to send a picture of them holding up one of their works.

While receiving the images, and putting together my video, I realised I needed more movement, so I asked everyone to send more photos, and I decided to add some movement to the captions as well. I finally finish my video but found that it was quite long, as I have so many parents send me responses, and some responses were very long. Also, some of the parents had not answered the question given and talked more about Artspiration classes, rather than Art in general. I asked Shalini and the rest of my team for advice, and they recommended I make two separate videos, one of the benefits of art, and one of the benefits of Art lessons. I sorted the responses into two groups and made the two videos.

I enjoyed video editing, as I have never done it before. I think both videos turned out amazing, and I would love to edit more in my free time.

Both videos’ links are here.

As we move progressed through our art workshop I experienced my leadership skills getting better. This is in terms of communication with other team members and supervisors, sharing ideas, taking ownership and accountability, time management to meet the workshop target and promptness to deliver the workshop on time.

I led with examples where I was playing a leading role such as video editing for art awareness of the project followed by the workshop.