Boltonia

Hi hi! Friday was the first session of the Design for Life project that I've mentioned before. The kids came to Bolton Museum for a day of looking, touching and drawing. We went down to the aquarium and took a peek at the beasties there and chatted to Paul, the awesomely knowledgeable aquarium guy.




This is a knifefish - related to the electric eel. Isn't he an amazing shape? Lovely stuff.

Later Don, the entomology guy, brought some of his insect collection from home for the kids to look at and handle if they were brave enough! I held the beauty below, a clicking cockroach, which felt a bit like a piece of varnished wood. All was well and fine until I tried to pass it to one of the kids and it started running away - I'm ashamed to say I squealed, dear reader. And swore. Oops!



Here are some of my sketches. It was really lovely to do some drawing from life as its been a while. I tried to encourage the kids to draw quickly and not be too precious about each sketch, quite a difficult task it turns out!







On Monday Kirsty, the project co-ordinator and I went to the school in Bolton to do a workshop on mono printing, which I was really nervous about as I hadn't done any for ages and had never taught anyone this technique. Luckily it went really well and the work the kids produced really impressed me. I like doing workshops as it always influences my own practice, it's easy to get stuck in a bit of a rut when you do the same thing every day. Fingers crossed the rest of the project goes as well! I'm also doing a workshop on Saturday at the museum for The Big Draw and don't actually have a clue what I'm supposed to be doing! Eek! Better find out really...