There was a lot of self portraying in our classroom lately. These amazing works are of Grade 2 students. They were insired by Frida Kahlo. A lot of privacy and backrounding.
Archives for November 2020
Folk Art, monkeys and musquitos
Believe it or not, this is Grade 1 working on Folk Art and German flowers with intense symmetry. I can’t get enough of them. These children are 6. I find them stunning!
The girl and the song, Stop-Motion animation
Here it is!! Our Stop-Motion! We have never been this cool!
Be patient please. First part is slow. We were all very shy, not sure about what we can actually do. But it gets really good.
This project means a lot to us. First I thought how it is strange, this 70′ story from a communist country. I do love the book though, obviously. But to translate this and place it in a world 50 years later.. one has doubts. Anyway, I was watching it this week over and over again with every 3rd Grade and many others and every time it gets better.
And it means so much because it was a project that took a long time and I got really wrapped in. It has steps that follow like an alphabet and you are fixing them, adding, making a better version, leaving parts that are obvious mistakes. Like how many times we started filming forgetting to put the lights on. And then we put them on once in between anyway. Or where the kids moved the tripod and the whole picture moved to the middle of the scene leaving whole frame half out of it.
I most love the voices. The strength the kids put in them. They are sometimes so dramatic and theatrical. They just knew what to do. The last neighbour is Nick Cave like sensible, AND the clock! The Clock should be employed at Shakespeare’s Globe when it’s old enough.
It was also great to connect with the music teacher where the students did their own music. And not to mention the translation done by my friend Erica. She did an extraordinary job!
Really, many precious steps.
Anyway, enjoy it and like someone called out once in Yugoslavia:
Let us be human together,
together without fear.
All humans need someone to listen and love
and too often we forget to look around and above.
Stop-motion is f.u.n.!
We are still working hard on this…
Painful joints, broken backs, numb legs, shaky fingers, stiff necks, … but if someone already made a dog that was not supposed to be in the story, we will move it across the room, lay it down and shake all the fleas out of its bum with its left leg even if it takes another 736 photos!
You know it’s fun when you can’t stop it!
First we spoke about a story we would like to make the animation after. We spoke about passing time, importance of it, who do we like to spend it with. Then I remembered an old Yugoslavian book (Croatian to be precise) I have, called The girl and the song, written by Slavko Mihalic and beautifully illustrated by Nives Kavuric–Kurtovic. And we went for it.
We’ve made our storyboard, the characters and two scenes. Then we went back to characters because we realized all of our female figures are flat. “Woooaah kids!! Where are the breasts??” So our hour was devoted to rolling the boobs. I even got some extra ones. Thanks!
Then much clicking which is still taking place and it might be so for a while. Then comes the translation which is already been taken over by a native English speaker Erica, my friend, mucho gracias! Then after, in der ferne, we will be doing the voice over because apparently it is how it is done and… who knows, we are only learning.
It’s still about me
From 2-D we logically went into 3-D.
I connected our lesson with the drama teacher who was teaching children about the monologues.
This was a long project because of many steps: building the bust, pulling over the skin, drying this out, adding the features and the hair, drying it out, painting, drying, painting some more, drying some more and finally making the monologues.
The sculpturing part was fun and interesting. Much of glue everywhere. Much of glue nowhere but running to the shop, buying flour, making glue, improvising.
Drying was interesting too. We grew some bacteria and fungi. The classroom had a very specific smell. We were all like weeeeeeeeeaaaaaa.
Skin was complicated because children are having high expectation regarding that and they stand there comparing their skin with what they’ve mixed and are usually not too happy with the result.
The monologues were added after everything was done – no glue or paints in sight any more. Pffffeeew!
They wrote few sentances in their sketch books about something they feel strongly towards. Then they tried to make a shape of what they wrote about on a white paper, cut it out, add the monologue inside, minimalistic decoration with chalk markers and glue it on the box.
I am impressed by the works, I think they came out very beautiful.
It’s about me
We used a kiss print technique for this. Very easy and lots of fun and messy moments. We’ve already made beautiful kiss prints in our sketch books to start ourselves properly.
We spoke about facial proportions and how to draw a face. What shape has an eye? Where does a nose start and end? Why is an upper lip darker than the lower one? Where do the ears come in, and last but not least, how does the hair grow from the top of our heads and not the opposite way?
Of course we will not stick to all of these because we aren’t rigid but we like to talk and think and understand. And if we can use some of it that’s just a great new adventure.
So eyes are beautiful but complicated to colour. Nose is strange but funny. Lips can look crooked, and teeth too. Hair is a science of various paints and a joy to paint (Brushes had to be invented to paint hair. Hand just relaxes and everything is easy – short, spiky, curly, straight… )
Skin comes in many shades, sometimes we are blue, sometimes we are pink, who cares.
And the t-shirts? Well the t-shirts are the best part of course. Glitter, dots, stripes and stars. And all of the paint and morning toothpaste stains.
