Fondant Sculpture and Melkterts (Milktarts)

My Grade 10 students have asked me to allow them to explore fondant sculpture in the third term this year.  I have already started collecting ideas and inspiration on my Pinterest board “Food and Art”.

http://betweenthepagesblog.typepad.com/between-the-pages-blog/2012/01/amazing-alice-in-wonderland-cake.html

http://betweenthepagesblog.typepad.com/between-the-pages-blog/2011/01/amazing-jules-verne-cake.html

http://blog.sylviaweinstock.com/post/14511119388

I have never baked anything more complicated than a muffin, so I am going to have to enlist the expertise of Phillipa our consumer studies teacher. Phillipa recently won a melktert (milktart) competition held at our school. Our headmaster fancied himself as an expert milktart baker & challenged the staff to beat him baking this traditional Afrikaans desert. 

The competition was judged by two owners of a local restaurant Spice in Durban, during our teatime on Friday 10^th of May.  You can download Phillipa’s winning recipe here and you might like to download Tessa’s (a member of our Afrikaans staff) here.

   

You can't break tradition (especially if it's a good one)

It has become a tradition at Durban Girls' College that my Grade 10 students do charcoal portraits every year. I tried to break pattern & asked the Grade 10 students to explore trees in charcoal, but they begged me to allow them to do portraits. Once again this project has been a success. The following artworks are by Katie, Linette, Olivia, Palesa and Taryn respectively. Click here if you want more detail on this lesson or to view artwork from a previous class.  

Small acts big consequences

I got notification today of a comment made on one of my blogs (written in 2010) about everyONEcounts see below:

I didn’t save this particular life, as the reader comments above, but just contributed in a small way by making an artwork & getting involved in the first everyONEcounts campaign.  My involvement in the first everyONEcounts campaign came about through my friendship with Lara Mellon who initiated the call to artists to raise awareness of abandoned babies. However, it was only when I saw an image of a baby abandoned in a dustbin at one of our local shopping malls that I reacted with my “heart”. Click here to read about this story:

Our new campaign “Speak ART against Human Trafficking”, was motivated by a teenager’s disappearance from her home in Durban in 2012. In the period between her going missing & her being returned to her family, we had made contact with two groups who work against human trafficking. They function as crisis and trauma centres (The Open Door) and raise awareness of human trafficking by giving talks at schools and businesses. (Red Light) The presentations by Red Light aim to inform the audience of the dangers of Human Trafficking, how to identify Human Trafficking and the measures that can be taken to protect oneself from becoming a victim.

As an Art teacher and artist I haven’t got the time or the skills to work at either of these organizations, but I can make a difference to my society in a meaningful way by making a small piece of art, as Fiona Couldridge did below with her "Jane" which is a portrait in acrylic paint and embroidery thread on Towel.  

Please get involved in our new campaign by donating or buying an A4 artwork – the exhibition will be held at KZNSA gallery in the last week of August 2013. Get more information from our website: www.everyonecounts.co.za

Silence of the Lands featured in the South African Artist magazine

Our third exhibition at Fat Tuesday Gallery, Bellevue Campus, 5 Bellevue Road in Kloof, Durban, called Silence of the Lands, is going to be held from the 18^th of June to the 6^th of July 2013. Read about the origin of our title in the article published in The South African Artist magazine March/April edition (Issue No.9)

The works featured in the magazine illustrate the working method we have adopted for this exhibition Each of us selects an image and shares it with the other three - specifying a particular format i.e. A4, A5 etc. We all paint from the same reference image and share the results at our regular meetings, which occur about once a month.  Each artist can submit as many versions as she wants of the same image, as long as the same reference is used.

Already in these very early works distinct differences in approach and style have emerged. Most of Ana Pereira De Vlieg’s work reflects her passionate personality and this is underscored by the bright layering of paint she uses in her work. Lara Mellon’s work depicts the swirling misty atmosphere that has become a characteristic of her work. Maggie Strachan demonstrates masterful observational skills in her interpretation of our shared references.

My mixed media pieces have returned to a monochromatic colour scheme that reminds me of the etchings I made when I was at university. I have also built up a low relief on these small works in plaster and stamped words and textures into the surface. You can see larger images of my pieces here.     

Teaching Art via YouTube

I Introduced my Grade 9 students to negative space and at the same time structured doodling. (Zentangles) You can download my slideshow on doodles & negative space & my lesson on Zentangles here.

Before going through the above concepts in my slide shows the students watched some YouTube clips on doodles, negative space and zentangles. 

Sunni Brown’s talk on the importance of doodling for improving concentration in school is enlightening. 

My students seemed to grasp the idea of negative space drawing better by watching the following you tube clip: 

Finally they learnt how to Zentangle by watching the following two clips: 

The basics of zentangling 

How to do a particular motif: 

I wanted the students to learn some art history so I gave them the following brief:

Task: Find an interesting silhouette from a famous artist’s artwork and zentangle (doodle) in the negative spaces. The silhouette must be left white. You need to write down the name of the artist and the name of the artwork that you used as the source of your silhouette. (Inspired by the following image I found on the internet (I can't find the reference for the image below.)

The girls had an opportunity to experiment with dip pens when making this artwork:

The following images are a few of the artworks the girls made in response to the brief: