Wallop!

Posts Tagged ‘Kathy Mason’

Classroom Creatives

23 May 2012

For the last couple of years or so, I’ve been leaning more and more towards the work I do as a sideline (to my everyday design and illustration work as ‘Wallop!’), teaching Art and design in various forms to primary school aged children. It’s something that I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed and I’m delighted to have now become a partner in a collective of artists who offer bespoke and unique Art workshops more widely to KS1 and KS2 pupils in and around our local area of Hampshire.

My partner in crime and I, Kathy Mason, who have worked together in school for some time now have just launched ‘Classroom Creatives’ with a Stopgap flash website in situ and a facebook page. Please do go and have a peek. A ‘like’ would be even better to keep up to date with our events and offerings.

To Kick Start our new collective we wanted a logo and a look that was fun and entertaining, so would appeal to our young artists but was also professional and business like for those Art Co-ordinators who might commission us. The brand I came up with combines simple sans serif type with a ‘doodled character ‘ formed by combining the initial ‘C’s of the two words. This character can be altered to become a different gremlin or doodlebug for the different uses of the logo and lends itself perfectly to be animated blinking or swaying for our online purposes.

Our new brand appears on the web pages and litererature we send out to schools and also on sets of badges and certificates awarded to the participants of our workshops.

We’re looking forward to a happy and successful future, sparking the imaginations of our young artists, one school at a  time :-)

Watch this space to follow our progress :-)


Knocking on new doors

25 April 2012

Yesterday I was actually quite happy to be out in the rain with my partner in crime, Kathy Mason, installing the results of a very lovely project. We were surreptitiously fixing and hiding  a complete set of miniature doors and windows recently completed by the year 6 pupils from my weekly art class, into the early years garden area of their school. The idea being that the youngest members of the school might then stumble across these ‘Borrowers’ styled dwellings and they can be incorporated in imaginative play and also used for storytelling and outdoor lessons.

The project was a joy to work on, both for the enthusiasm of the older children to create the pieces and the anticipation of their being able to display them in such a delightful way. As these children will be leaving the school this year, they have also left a little legacy behind for their younger friends.

The process involved a session of discussion and design, considering the characters who would live behind each door. The doors were then cut out of clay according to the initial designs and embellishments added, before first firing. The children finally coloured their pieces and they were whisked away by Kathy to be fired ready for installation. The final part of the project for the older participants of this project will be some map drawing sessions of the ’secret’ locations of all the pieces now that they are in situ.