Picture books and portraits

I had a wonderful opportunity to teach a short family course for adults and children (age 5-8 years) at The Finnish Adult Education Institute. Our theme was animal stories and we explored this through art, dance, storytelling and illustration. First session was about painting portraits of animals, reading stories and getting to know each other.

Here are some of the cool animal portraits!

 

 

Our second session was about movement and dance improvisation. We also started storycrafting, a method for the children to invent their own stories. Based on these stories we would then illustrate our own picture books.

The children were in charge of the picture book process. Adults were helping them out by writing the text or illustrating the book with the child. The story was divided in three double spreads.

Here are the wonderfully inventive books the children made with their parents. I was given the permission to publish the books here. The stories were fun to read aloud at the end of the course and the children were very impressed (as were the adults, especially me!) by everybody's creations.

"The Little Cat" by Hertta (8 years)

The back cover text: "The little black cat finds a friend and and a home where she is loved. During the night the northern lights turn her fur into rainbow colours."

"Heavy Rocks" by Alvari (5 years) and his mother Virva

A story about how Hevisaurus (a very popular children's music band) got started. The humorous tale involves two boys, a pig, a rabbit and a "band mobile phone", a farm and a rock concert.

"The Lost Rabbits" by Saga (6 years) and her mother Sari

The book tells a story of three rabbits that get lost in the grass, but eventually find their way home to their mother. Happy ending involves eating delicious porridge and gingerbread biscuits.

A Christmas Story by Tuukka (5 years) and his mother Tarja

A happy story about the little boy Tuukka and his family. The illustrations had lots of details about electricity, switchboards and ita had also a Christmas Tree and Santa Claus.

Workshop at school

This week I was teaching a workshop in my son's class. I told the children about illustrator's work and the process of making a picture book. I showed some sketches, original illustrations and books. Then they illustrated their own mini books. They had already written the text with their teacher. The title was "When I grow, I'm going to be...". 

The occupations included a few hairdressers, a teacher and a doctor, but also several artists and even one illustrator. An arctic researcher was the most unusual one, I think. Some wonderful little books they made in a very short time. Loved it!

 

 

 

Supercool swimming pool!

Here are some wonderful photos from one of the kindergartens we have visited so far with Elsa-workshops.
We started the art project together with the children by reading the book about Elsa's first visit to an indoor swimming pool. Then we did some painting with marbles to create the water in different shades of blue. Also some frogs were born, ready to dive into the pool water.
We instructed the group's own teachers to continue building a swimming pool area with coloured tiles around the water and even adding extra characters and elements to the 3D-pool. And this is one of the projects finished. These children created a truly fantastic swimming pool, I'm so impressed and happy!

Multi-coloured swimming pool tiles.

This frog (bottom right) meets a surfer!

Lifebuoy has saved one swimmer...jump board tower on the right!

Swimming pool tiles in progress.

Helsinki Book Fair and Elsa workshops

Last weekend I was performing with Trio Pullakka, our band that is really a quartet. This was part of Elsa book reading session at Helsinki Book Fair children's area. Our next "gig" will be in a week's time at our local library.
We have started our 'Elsa workshop tour' at pre-schools and kindergartens with Kerttu. So far it's been really exciting. We have planned two different workshops, one for each book. Both of the workshops start with reading one of the Elsa books.
We have had imaginary trip through the winter forest to the ice-skating rink with some of the children for Elsa luistelemassa -book ("Elsa goes ice-skating"). This workshop is the one with movement, improvisation and learning about the basic skating techniques through play and dance. With others we have started to build a swimming pool by painting water with marbles and making frogs. The swimming pool project will continue so that the group can build their own 3D pool with water, frogs, tiles and maybe even slides and jump boards for the swimmers.

The Night of the Arts in Helsinki

Here are some photos from the event we arranged at Gudrun Sjödén Store on the Night of the Arts in August. Every year, for one special evening, the city fills up with arts, music, performances, exhibition and activities in shops and galleries, parks and streets.
This year we arranged a spontaneous happening at one of my favourite designer Gudrun Sjödén's store, where I work from time to time with some wonderful, talented people. The night included Fado songs, live models in the window and improvised watercolour painting.

Detail from the randomly painted patterns

Me and Lumimarja, the live models

Siiri and Elsa enjoyed painting...

...and wanted a new white sheet to paint on!

Artwork by Siiri and Elsa

Birds and their habitats

Some beautiful paintings were created last weekend at the gallery!

Workshop weekend

Yesterday three preschool groups from a nearby nursery school visited the exhibition. They were pretty excited to be in an art gallery. We had a workshop where everybody could do their own fantastic fairytale bird.
I had designed bird stencils and had them made in a laser cutting studio Laser-Riimikko. The children seemed to really enjoy painting and came up with some amazing artwork in less than half an hour. This weekend I'll have two more workshops with children aged 4-13 years.

Birds made by children of Impivaara nursery school

Opening night

Yesterday evening was the opening party of my Lintuja! Birds! -exhibition. So many wonderful people came to the gallery. It was quite a task to have a chat with everybody. And now I'm stocked with chocolate for weeks, not to mention all the gorgeous flowers! Thank you!

 Here's my son doing a few spins and turns!

We arranged a corner for children to draw their own pictures.