Emily Hodgson - Three years on and look what she's drawing now!

Emily Hodgson emailed me birthday greetings in January this year. She is now in Year 8! I asked her to send me some drawings to revive this blog, and she obliged me with these amazing pictures!

No reason why the Drawing Time blogs shouldn't keep going, just because I moved from Melbourne to the Wimmera in 2012.
Perhaps this blog, as well as the Boys Drawing Time blog, could be revived as a Drawing Time Gallery. I will think about that.

Thank-you soooo much, Emily! Be sure to tell the other Drawing Timers about the plan for a online gallery blog.  And for those art-lovers checking out Em's drawings on this blog right now, I recommend that you cross over to Writing Time - Girls Only, and see what Emily is up to in her writing these days as well. It's absolutely fantastic! Go Emily! Love your work!

More Pictures from Natimuk Drawing Time

We have a backlog of pictures from Weeks 3, 2 and 1, Natimuk Drawing Time Club - Girls and One Boy!!

First we will post up the rest of Week 2 pictures which I photographed with my phone.

This beautiful drawing is by Lani Jones. The flowers are so perky and colourful, standing proudly in the desert landscape. I'm not sure if Lani intended the sky to look as if it is raining or not, but I like to think so, as the lines are slanting downward like rain does. I think I shall print this lovely piece out to hang on the wall as a rain spell for this year.  Everytime I look at it, I will cross my fingers and wish hard for rain!! Thank-you Lani.

This artistically wild and free masterpiece is by Freya Jones, younger sister of Lani Jones.  Freya has filled in the whole page with gorgeous colours and patterns, and it really looks like she enjoyed herself while creating this piece. The lines are wonderfully fluid and very exciting!!

Here is a collaboration between Kelly Grey, Lani Jones, Ben Grey and Mars Drum.  It was lots of fun playing with this "Pass It On" piece, it got more fascinating every time it rotated! Here's an aerial view of the collaboration in process:

 Collaborations are very important learning experiences for any artist. The one rule is that you are not allowed to "go over" anyone  else's drawing, after rotating 90 degrees, you can only "add" to it...the tacit rule is that you will add to it only in the same vein that it was previously drawn, ie. usually in a positive way. This Drawing Time game teaches all the artists involved to relinquish full control of their creative input, to drop the "preciousness" and drive for perfection, gain skills in working as a team, learn to embrace differences and "accidents", etc etc etc. It's fun and a valuable life experience at the same time. 

This is soooo beautiful! It is a collaboration between Freya Jones, Isabelle Hoskins and Mars Drum (myself!). I was completely inspired during this collaborative piece, the other two artists were showing me a whole new way to collaborate with each other. One or two of us would colour with watercolour pencils, while the third artist would paint over the lines with the water brush. I think the result shows a softness and fluidity that I haven't seen before in collaborative pieces, in all the years Drawing Time has been going. Yay!!

Isabelle Hoskins is the creator of the above masterpiece, isn't it a beauty? I absolutely love it, I'm reminded of  one of my grandmother's painting of roses in these colours....just beautiful, Isabelle!

Isabelle and I collaborated on this piece, which was heaps of fun. Sometimes Isabelle would draw and I would follow with the water brush, then we would swap around. I think of birds in a wild storm when I look at this. Isabelle has a definite individual style, her favourite thing in Drawing Time is experimenting with the thick black ProMarker pen, which I totally understand as the black pen is also my favourite.

Week 2 Natimuk Girls + 1 Boy

The above three drawings by Naja Wells  are gorgeous! Like myself throughout childhood, Naja draws pictures of girls mostly, paying attention to all the details. Naja has developed her own individual and beautiful techniques as you can see above...keep it happening, Naja!

Once again, Kelly Grey has produced an amazing piece of artwork, showing a great flair for colour and form. Kelly, that picture above is wonderful, makes me feel really happy looking at it. What a beautiful rainbow sky...and the colours and patterns on your googly-eyed character ( Ice Age?) are fantastic!

 I'm putting up Ben Grey's pictures on this site even though he is a boy, because he has been attending the Girls only Plus One Boy classes, as he is the brother of the two amazing female artists above. 
Just below is a drawing by Ben, it's a goanna climbing up a tree. It is a beauty! I love that tree as much as the goanna.

 And here's another dragon by Ben Grey...he is an expert on dragons. Check out the smoke coming out through the nostrils, and I especially love the way Ben has drawn the wings. Great artwork again, Ben!

This is Patria Lee's first visit to Drawing Time, and look how colourful and sensational her pictures are, above and below. That tree of coloured spirals is magical, Patria. 

Patria has drawn a girl saying "Cool!" about the fabulous rainbow.  No wonder, that rainbow is pretty magical too, like Patria's tree. And look what happened to Patria's picture when I accidently opened the scanner while it was being processed. It's an interesting effect, isn't it?

First Ever Girls Drawing Time in Natimuk!!!

 These are selected works from the first ever Girls Drawing Time club in Natimuk. But first I must explain, that we do have ONE boy in the club. He did attend the first ever boys club and found that he was the only boy to turn up, so the rules were bent for Ben Grey to attend the girls only drawing club the next day with his sisters, Kelly and Naja. You can see Ben's drawings from the Boys DT club on the Boys Drawing Time blog, but here is his selected art-piece from the Girls Drawing Time session held in Natimuk last Wednesday. It's a ripper, isn't it? A ripper rhino!

Below is a series of drawings selected by the female artist attendees of Natimuk's first ever Drawing Time club. It was a wonderfully productive drawing session. There were several group collaborations completed in the 90 minute session, and many individual pieces. The girls and Ben wasted no time in choosing their weapons ( Derwent pencils, fineliners, HB to 9B greyleads or Promarkers) and getting down to some serious fun. Some chose to copy pictures from the Drawing Time library books, some chose to use these images just for starting points and some chose to experiment with all the colours and types of pencils, eg metallic or watercolour.

Bella Panozza

Isabelle Hoskins

Jessica Taylor

Kelly Grey

Ella Cox

Naja Wells

Pearl Dark

What a fine exhibition! Such amazing, beautiful and thoughtful work, it's easy to see that these girls have been drawing for years, each drawing is so individual, and each has a strong confident hand behind it. Girls, please feel free to join up with the blog and add your own comments on your selected picture....Viewers love to know more about the story behind the picture, why you chose your particular theme or idea, and how you tackled drawing it. See if your parents can help you with this, or you can ask me for help at the next session if you're interested in commenting on your work. 

Collaboration: Naja, Kelly, Ben and Mars

Above is one of the fantastic collaborations from last week. We all start drawing in each corner, then one person says "Pass it on!", so we turn the paper round and continue to add to the previous artist's corner. The "pass it on" person says it at regular intervals until the picture is full. 
We ended the Drawing time session last week with the "Speed Collaboration" game. That's where we all sit around one table and draw as quickly as possible on rough paper with grey-lead pencils, passing the paper on to the person on our right every time the facilitator says "Pass it on". Unlike the group collaboration on large paper, this one is passed on at a much faster rate...and what happens on each A5 bit of paper can get pretty kooky and surreal.

Drawing Time is about developing your own individual style of drawing, and feeling confident about drawing anything on paper, and knowing that there is no-one who will criticise your drawings because Drawing Time is a completely positive environment for everyone to draw whatever they want however they want!!

Most importantly, Drawing Time is about FUN!

Two Artist nieces

 Molly Drum is one of my three beautiful nieces. She lives in Bendigo, where the extended Drum family gathered this year for Christmas. This is the second piece of artwork that Molly has allowed on this blog, I feel very lucky! Isn't this picture just gorgeous? I absolutely love it! Those colours are sensational, they make me smile every time I look at this picture. Thank-you, Molly, twas lovely to draw with you at xmas. Keep the amazing drawings coming!!

This is an unfinished piece by another stunningly talented niece, her name is Mietta Drum-Mullally. I hope she doesn't mind me posting it unfinished, that hanging spider seems to be missing a few legs....but I just love her style and attention to detail. Mietta recently completed Year 12 art in Melbourne, and she got a result of 48/50, which means she is in the top 3% Year 12 art students in Victoria! And she's only in Year 11!! I am sooooo proud of her!

Mietta and Molly have both promised to send me more of their artwork. My other niece, Bridget Drum, is also an awesome artist, watch this space for her artwork, it will be posted up very soon.

Yasmine Harradine

Yasmine Harradine is an artist in Year 5 at 298 Horsham PS. I have been teaching her class for the last three weeks while their teacher, Mr Vivien, was on holidays overseas. The whole class produced these amazing pictures as part of their research projects on Antarctica. They worked on the backgrounds using collage and fineliner felt-tip pens, then today they drew their topic animal on a separate piece of paper and stuck them on front of the backdrop. Yasmine, this is a beautiful masterpiece!!

Who created this???

I found this beautiful picture in my Drawing Time files today. The signature is cut off, so I don't know who created it, but I love it so much that I had to post it anyway! Please let me know through the comments section if you are the artist, or if you know who drew it.