Cinnabar Brunch No. 4

Spring has arrived and with it the promise of brighter mornings to help get you out of bed!  I was up early Sunday morning to catch the 10am Brunch Session with Cinnabar and take some shots of fellow foodies and the always lovely and thoughtful menu.  As usual, hot coffee and refreshing cocktails were ready and waiting along with the pastry du jour, Apple-Ginger turnovers.

The food was as rich and warm as it was beautiful.  After a long week of Art Club, it was the perfect little cozy getaway for me!  Thanks to the awesome Chefs for their hard work putting all of this together for everyone!

ART CLUB | Day 3: Monster Mash-Up!

This was a fun one.  We did a bunch of playful "letting go" exercises for this class, encouraging kids to relinquish creative control and be open to the ideas of others to produce collaborative pieces.  What better theme than MONSTERS to to really amp up the colourful and crazy nature of these exercises.  Our inspirational book was Peter McCarty's The Monster Returns.  We started out with trifold monsters, everyone drawing the head, passing onto the next person to do the body and again for the legs, WITHOUT PEEKING!  We moved back to colour and shapes, asking each person to draw any sort of shape before passing it onto the next person who would then draw a monster inspired by the colour and shape presented to them.  It gave the kids a chance to see how their work could inspire others, discover different perspectives and share one another's imagination.

I had them paint a variety of shapes and colours which were then cut out and mixed up in a big bowl.  Random handfuls were then redistributed to the kids to create a monster using the shapes they were given!

This was definitely a really really fun day for everyone!  Looking forward to seeing the monsters that are created this coming week!

 

xo

 

ART CLUB | Day 2: ISH Lines

Man.  Art Club is kicking my butt into Organization Land.  The prep and cleaning on top of family life and the other projects and photos I have is insane but seeing the piles of work that are being created and the great feedback I am getting from both the kids and parents once the madness dissipates has been worth all the effort.  Not to mention, my house has been cleaner than ever!  Serious bonus points there!

Day 2.  We focused on LINE with inspiration drawn from the book ISH!  The goal was to break away from creating "perfect" or "correct" renditions of a drawing, but to focus on the "feeling" or the "essence" of the object being drawn.  We focused on mark-making: soft vs hard, short vs long, large vs small movements, and round vs jagged lines.  We started off with charcoal, closing our eyes and letting our hands "dance" to the beat and swells of a variety of music.  I pulled songs from one of my favourite albums, The Royal Tenenbaums, starting of with the slow gentle rhythm of"These Days" by Nico, switching it up to "Jackie is a Punk" by The Ramones, and then taking it down just a little with the playful "Police and Thieves" by The Clash.  They loved it, of course.  We assessed our drawings and they requested one last song.  The girls pleaded for Let It Go and the boys groaned in ___.  Luckily, someone piped up with Rock'n'Roll and they all cheered for that.  So "I Love Rock'n'Roll" it was... CLICK HERE for the Instagram Video of them in action!

We did a bunch more projects with pastels to integrate what we learned about colour the previous day.  The projects required me to be 100% hands on (especially getting these hands decent!) and was unable to document beyond this small bunch of photos!

Stay Tuned for Wednesday's MONSTER COLLAB day...

 

XO

 

 

ART CLUB | Day 1: Colour Theory

As with any job I take on, no matter how big or small, my Motherhood anxiety kicks in and i procrastinate by stuffing my face or scrolling through my FB/IG feed.  I'm not sure why I was having anxiety over leading kids through an art project but it was there.  Day 1 was a success and I am now super stoked for Day 2, no anxiety.  So, because I had my hands full, this post looks more like photos of my house as opposed to photos of the kids in action.  That said, I think it turned out to be a pretty sweet environment for the kids to work in, especially considering it's my dining room.  I made my first trip to Welk's back in January, and one of the purchases I made was an art card collection of one of my favourite artists/topographists: Jessica Hische.  It's been on the backburner to have a set of the Alphabet framed for the hallway but it just hasn't happened yet.  I have also had this giant blank canvas sitting on our wall for probably almost 6 months.  These two potential projects came together perfectly as the backdrop and display board for this Art Club class!  HA! 
 

Day 1 would focus on basic Colour Theory.  What better book to start with than Peter Reynold's THE DOT.  If you haven't read this book, pick it up.  We've had it for a few year's now and it continues to be an inspirational favourite.  And if you have read THE DOT, then you can probably guess which book is hiding under it...  FIND OUT TOMORROW!

Can I just say that after a year of living in our little ranchero, I am finally falling in love with what is happening!!!  I LOVE IT.  I had 2 girlfriends over for a Birthday Breakfast and asked Kevin to throw on some Velvet Underground on the record player.  When I saw that he had put the sleeve up on the shelf with Andy's Banana I wet my pants a little.  This is now the designated record spot.  It has changed since then, but what better record cover than this for Art Club, right??? SWOON.  That's Chloe's self-portrait from the portrait painting session I led last month for Eve's birthday party.  And those super rad fantastic crazy animals are the ones from Mexico that I said I never wanted to show anyone.  I went back to Welk's last week and bought a bunch of mini succulents for these new little shelves.  The cute bowl beside the record was part of a pair, the other pair being the one that Chloe accidentally broke in the store and therefor we had to buy them. 

Alright, enough of my gloating, onto the nitty gritty.  The kids blew my mind.  I designed a simple Colour Wheel template the night before because I only work at the 13th hour.  I was surprised when nobody knew what it was and had never done one before and then I realized I had never had my kids do one either.  THEY were surprised to find out that I had painted the entire wheel using nothing but the Primary Colours.  We began with Primary, of course, then moved onto Secondary.  PIECE OF CAKE.

Tertiaries proved to be more challenging as they had to mix the Secondary Colours a total of 3 times.  Everyone needed a little assistance with a colour here and there, and everyone took turns holding out their brushes asking me "IS THIS THE RIGHT COLOUR!!! IS THIS OK?!!!"  I was impressed with their perseverance, nobody gave up, and there wasn't a single complaint.

Inspired by THE DOT, I had them move onto a few projects that required more mixing: Painting a GIANT dot in their favourite colour, painting different sized dots in different colours to represent each person in their family, painting a dot by not painting a dot (negative space), and then painting a dot party! 

Each class ends with a button making project where they use what they have learned that day to make a button to take home, sort of like a badge!  I'll try to take more photos during tomorrow's class, hopefully it's a sunnier day! 

 

The Pauhaus presents: ART CLUB!

there are a lot of things in motion here at The Pauhaus!  i've got a plate full of delicious projects for the next couple of months and i couldn't be more excited.  first things first, i will be hosting a trial run of Art Classes for kids ages 4-6 over Spring Break.  i love diving into arts, crafts and creative things in general with kids because they are blank slates, they haven't had rules slammed into their heads that can often dampen free expression and the openness to make mistakes and just keep going.  week 1 is officially FULL with 6 more spots available for March 21-25 (including Good Friday).  Visit ART CLUB for the details on the class and register now!

xo