Sunday 27 May 2012

Mono-printing & Typewriter experimentation










 We had a lot of excitement in last Tuesdays session when I brought in my two typewriters. The students loved them and were very careful and respectful while they tip tapped away. Some of them also tried their hands at Mono-printing pages 5&6 of their concertina books. The ink dried out very quickly because it was water-based, but we had some interesting effects explored. Other students used their Sun prints for pages 3&4 and used the typewriters to add their text. A very energetic session with plenty or work done, but lots still to do.





Collage time







To form our 6 or 8 page concertina books, we started to create the first 2 pages of the narrative. So with collage materials in abundance and ideas flowing, the students put paper to glue and shapes, textures and colours began to form. The students were still a little hesitant in exercising their creative muscle but soon took to the task and seemed to enjoy the energy of creating. They all used their storyboards as references to which images to create for their first double page spreads. The text will take form later in the sessions, after the backgrounds give a feel of their stories. 


'Sunography' Prints





To shift the focus from the written stories to the illustrated, we classes began to make stencils of the ghostly characters, places or objects in their narratives in order to MAKE their very own photograph using some 'Sunography' paper. Each student drew and cut out a shape, added details with pins to perforate sections to allow the sun to shine through and went outside on an expedition to create shadowy and spooky sun prints. Tuesday's class were lucky to have a less cloudy day than Monday's class and the results varied because of that, however they did look wonderful ambiguous and spirit-like, just as we had intended.


Forming Storyboards






As the weeks progressed both the Monday and Tuesday groups got stuck into their storyboarding and planning of their ghoulish narratives. Inspired along the way by activities such as John's 'Machine Gun writing' exercises, local legend telling, collaborative class poems, stories of ghostly sightings at Falinge school, writing from the perspective of characters in Touchstone Archive photographs and using many a prompting object or material to conjure up a ghost story of their own. Imaginations, on the whole,  needed a little more nurturing than I first planned, but after a couple of sessions some wonderful stories started to emerge.


Monday 21 May 2012

Making choices.....


I wanted to give them a choice of either altering a book in a two dimensional way offering more opportunities to write, OR working a three dimensional way of working inspired by Su Blackwell. When presented with this choice the vibrant full of ideas tuesday group surprisingly couldn`t grasp being given this choice and it took most of the session for the class to fully grasp what choice to make. The quieter, more cautious monday group coped with the decision well and seemed to revel in being given this opportunity.

The tuesday group struggled to use their own initiative and needed constant direction whereas
the monday group again seemed to cope better with their freedom to make......






Thursday 17 May 2012

Mythical Environments...


Both groups made a beak book to start to imagine where their myth might take place- John worked with both groups to help inspire and make their myths modern ....the results were really beautiful with lots of detailed designs...






Friday 11 May 2012

Looking forward to cracking on with the Monday group next week but in the meantime the joyously creative Tuesday class are now concentrating on the finishing of their storyboxes. The majority of pupils have produced brilliantly detailed boxes with one group making an actual book using an old Victorian bound volume. I'm focusing on detailed finishing using sewing and printed texts but the crucial stage is the selection addition of the key text to tell their stories. These storyboxes will  use essential parts of the story as 'teasers' for the whole tale, letting the veiwer go on a journey using their imagination. They are all beautifully dark and fairly gruesome but not overly worked in terms of wild slasher horror! (but there is blood..quite a lot...). Having mentioned music to them they are all desperate to work on various options of sound but as they were somewhat wayward this week I'm keeping that as a reward!...One group of boys have already written a rather good dark rap out of the sessions which they demo'd to me on Tueday...I'm focusing on handmade and reworked books with the Monday group and we'll be producing pages for those this week using variuos media and I shall be reading some stories to them as a calming antidote to making!...More bizarre items on this weeks shopping list...marvellous!....

Wednesday 9 May 2012


Following on from my two initial visits to the school, I have continued to visit Lucy's, Nicky's and Sarah's groups to introduce workshop exercises and/or lend support to writing and story making on an individual basis with the pupils.

On 31st April I delivered a free-writing exercise to Sarah's and Nicky's groups and talked of Ginny Greenteeth, suggesting ways in which such legends might be updated and given a different spin. I did likewise with Lucy's class, this time using Greek mythology as examples.

On 1st May I introduced the children in Sarah's group to the story of the Goblin Builders and, following my suggestions, they began work on alternative versions of this legend. I went on to visit both Nicky's and Lucy's groups to work 1-1 with the pupils, either on the work that they had underway or in helping those who were finding it difficult to make a start.

My final visit on 8th May was spent on further 1-1 work in Sarah's and (very briefly) Nicky's classes. This was possibly the most fruitful day, helping the struggling pupils kick-start their writing and others to develop their work, resulting in some wonderfully inventive, entertaining (and occasionally funny) stories and poems.

John Lindley

Saturday 5 May 2012

Let The Making Commence






We've started to illustrate our stories using collage and cut ups, we're making zines so the low-fi style is working well.  Next week onto textiles & printing...