Sarah Lovell from Sarah Lovell Art went back to her old school in west Dorset – where she taught before turning her hand to greeting card design – to run an art workshop with year 1 and 2 students.
She spoke to all the children about how she creates the original pictures using watercolour and ink, gets them scanned and then printed as cards and how they eventually end up for sale in shops. It was a wonderful opportunity to introduce a new generation to how greeting cards are made.
“I showed them all pictures of my cards and books,” says Sarah. “The children then discussed what they’d like to draw/paint. During the first half of the session the children created their own creatures. Some did unicorns, as a lot of my illustrations are unicorns and I had made stencils for them, while others did dragons and others created their own animals/mythical creatures. They used water colour and then added detail in black pen.”
The children then thought about where their creature would live and made a collage background using coloured papers, sequins, feathers and stickers. To finish, the children added their animal/ creature on top of the background.
“The children were all so enthusiastic about talking about what they wanted to draw them getting down to creating their art,” says Sarah. “They were all thoroughly absorbed in their creations and asked if I could come back tomorrow! We all had such a lovely day. The Year 1 and 2 teachers were planning on doing further work with the children using their pictures as inspiration. The year 1 teacher emailed me saying: a quick note to say thank you for a brilliant day yesterday, the children were so engaged and got lots out of creating their amazing pictures.”
