Monday, August 30, 2010

Many many monkeys

Like many other children's authors around Australia, I was in schools all last week celebrating Book Week. I love visiting schools but do find it's quite a different energy to the quiet, introspective, creative place I need to be in to write. For me, it feels much more like a performance - a One Woman Show. Not having the strongest of voices, by the end of the week, despite being energised, inspired and excited by all the wonderful children, librarians and teachers I meet, I'm also pretty worn out.
Lately I have been running drawing workshops with primary students where I talk to them about developing some of the characters in the picture books I have illustrated. Then I take them through a step-by-step drawing of a baby monkey from a book I illustrated for Margaret Wild a few years ago called Too Many Monkeys. I have run this workshop with students of all ages, but today was the first time I have done it with kindergarten students. Here are some of their drawings.
The photos aren't that great because I took them on my phone, but you can still see how beautiful the drawings are. Even though each of them copied exactly the same drawing from the whiteboard, each drawing is so exquisitely unique.


Click here for a video on the Booked Out website to see an example of this drawing workshop.


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