Drawing and ecology at Lesquin School | Eric Bourdon
on the website Eric Bourdon, French artist painter | Gallery,
in the category Workshops.
Educational project by French contemporary artist painter Eric Bourdon, combining art and ecology, held at Pasteur School in Lesquin, France. Artistic creation connects with ecological recycling. From randomly drawn lines, characters are created in improvisation. The supports are recycled, they have not been chosen. 'Pareidolia' is the process by which we imagine characters or scenes by looking at clouds, spaghetti or ink blots...
DRAWING - ECOLOGY PROJECT
PASTEUR SCHOOL IN LESQUIN, 2010-2011
Educational project combining art and ecology, realized by Lille artist painter Eric Bourdon at Pasteur School in Lesquin from 2010 to 2011. It is the development of a shorter project carried out in a single first grade class in Roubaix in 2007. This time it involved 3 first grade classes and 4 second grade classes (6-8 years), during 8 sessions of 1h40 per class, or 93 hours of interventions from November 2010 to May 2011.
The discovery of a contemporary artist and his paintings by the pupils is initiated by returning to the technique of an ancient 'institutional' painter : Joan Miró.
"The port" by Miró is one of his less colorful paintings, but it has the advantage of easily explaining the construction of the characters.
From strokes first made almost at random, the characters are created gradually. They are not designed before to be drawn.
Lines are made, in all directions, on the blackboard. In accordance with this concept,
the pupils come to complete the drawings and make improvised characters appear.
Drawings on 21x29.7cm sheets are then distributed to each child. Based on the lines already drawn, they will add to the most appropriate locations the elements that identify the characters (eyes, mouth, hands, feet, hair...), following the model of the examples in the left margin.
Pupils then make their own work, freely inspired. They draw their own lines randomly on a white sheet, and they complete them to make characters.
Meanwhile, a few pupils take turns coming to draw lines with back paint on a vertical wooden support, a recovered 'door' (1x2m).
In the following session, the children work individually on a recycled canvas type medium (mainly cotton : shirts, curtains, cut out t-shirts...) preferably in a still recognizable form, in order for them to be aware of reusing an object which had a different function.
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The entire project is available for free by downloading this file :
Eric Bourdon, Drawing-Ecology Project, Lesquin School [ pdf 5MB ]
