Paint STUFF: Online Visual Art Workshop 23 Jul 2021
Guided by artist Lucy Hill, experiment with everyday stuff from your kitchen to make your own paint, brushes and exciting new artwork at home.
Exploring everyday materials from your kitchen cupboards, such as flour, coffee, turmeric, salt, vegetable oil, leaves, soaps, hand sanitiser, find out how all this different stuff interacts to make your own colourful paints.
By looking at a range of artists who make their own paints, inks, papers and drawing materials, discover the wonderful effects they achieve from the materials they use.
Together in this workshop, we will get messy and experimental, sharing our kitchen paint lab findings with each other. We’ll explore ways of making paint brushes from household materials and experiment with the kinds of marks they can make, creating gorgeous artworks together and devising our own paint recipes.
Requirements for Participation
For safety reasons, a parent or grown-up should be present in the room throughout the session, and if necessary be available to assist their child, so you're very welcome to take part in the workshop alongside your child.
- Computer/Tablet/Phone with internet access for Zoom – placed on a table at children’s eye level
- A table to sit at
Materials required:
- Basic Kitchen Cupboard equipment: A spoon, a fork, jars, cups or bowls (optional extras: sieve, pestal & mortar, potato masher, wooden spoons)
- Dry: instant coffee, tea bag, cocoa powder, turmeric powder, dark green leaves like cabbage or grass, flower petals (any you can find), salt, sugar, flour
- Liquid: cold tea, cold coffee, cold cocoa or hot chocolate, mud or clay, beetroot juice & slices, water, vinegar, hand sanitiser
- Card: any colour (white, brown or black or a mixture), any size, recycled packaging is fine.
- Newspaper or any table covering
- A paintbrush and/or sponge (Lucy will show how you can make your own paint brushes. If you would like to do this too you will need some sticks, some string and some scraps of materials like sponge, fabric, bubble wrap)
Don’t worry if you don’t have any/many of these. You can join in with the most basic cup of cold coffee and get ideas for more explorations for later.
Online platform: The workshop will be delivered using the Zoom video call software. This will be a private Zoom session which will only be accessed by those booked into the workshop, the artist and The Ark's staff. The session will be recorded for the safety and security of all participants, however this recording will not be shared publicly and will be deleted within 30 days.
About Lucy Hill
Lucy was The Ark's inaugural John Coolahan Early Years Artist in Residence during 2018/2019. A visual artist, educator and researcher with particular interest and expertise in the area of early years visual arts education, Lucy has exhibited nationally and internationally and has won several public art commissions and awards. Her interest in early years visual art education began in 2003 when (inspired by her own children), she approached the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar to allow her to design a visual art program for two year olds which she subsequently delivered for ten years. Lucy has also been an ‘aterlierista’ (a type of artist in residence) with Woodland Park Preschool in Westport since 2007, collaborating on documentation projects, exhibitions, installations, toddler and sibling workshops, education programs for parents and educators, family art events and research. Lucy also works with agencies, consultants and institutions on long and short term early years projects that have culminated in interactive child friendly exhibitions. Her training and professional development in this area includes a study visit with Early Childhood Ireland to visit Reggio Emilia inspired preschools in Italy. Lucy is also currently working on a PhD research project at NCAD with an early years visual art focus. You can see some of Lucy's work at her website: https://www.lucyhill.ie/