Sally Hancox

This summer holiday I am teaching four ‘day camps’ jam packed with arts and crafts. The general theme is story telling and the 1st day included this activity.

First we read “Today is Monday” by Eric Carle. (see pic above)

Then we used poster paint, tissue paper and some scraping tools to make abstract patterns (below)

Then we drew animals on the back of our paper and cut them out. Sticking them on coloured or white paper.

This is another set of illustrations for a book that will be published next year for use in London ESOL classrooms. It is a story about a woman who is over 60 and assumes that the young men on the bus don’t deserve the priority seats.

She feels bad, and is more careful in the future but still doesn’t like it when kids take them.

This week we set up three tables of objects to draw. We talked about

• looking carefully at the objects
• selecting the bits we want to draw
• drawing the object from ‘my’ point of view
• how to paint a gradient
• mixing the colour we want

This picture at the bottom is great especially as the student is only 4 or 5, hasn’t started year one of school yet!

My Friend Holly asked me to help her with some basic weaving skills. We made this colourful heddle and loom!

When I got to her studio she had this big frame/folding screen leaning against the wall and I knew that was a good place to start.

We popped to the 99p shop and got some lolly sticks, epoxy resin, and got a wooden crate from the veg shop.

To make the heddle we taped together the lolly sticks, leaving a space in-between for thread and then glued them to 2 bits of crate.

To make the warp we used 2 bits shades of blue, to make life a little easier. we just threaded around the edges of the frame and through the holes we’d made.

It took a few hours and now lets see if Holly enjoys it enough to weave the whole thing.

Holly will be having an exhibition in the Autumn so lets see if it has any weaving…

http://www.holly-white.com/