K.I.D.S. Art Ed at Red Hook Waterfront Arts Festival

Teaching artist Meghan Keane used the Red Hook Waterfront Arts Festival as a chance to explore drawing and sustainability.  Recycling her plastic bag collection as a drawing material she engaged children and their care-givers in yet another exciting Drawing Together exploration.  Participants had the option to experiment with sailors knots to attach the plastic bags to one another or to simply create their own silly, make-up-their-own knots.  Participants came and went, tying and experimenting, and slowly our plastic bag drawing grew and grew:

RHI After School Update: Class 4 of 10

Our latest session of RHI After School classes is in full swing. With the help of Kentler Teaching Artist Meghan Keane and RHI tutors, Ricky and Destiny, students have been focusing on their goal for this session: "get better at drawing" but specifically "learn to draw people"!

This week students and advisers did musical chairs observational drawing. Students looked across the desk at their neighbor, observing specific facial features, and practiced drawing different parts on cardboard pieces. They switched seats every two minutes in time to music, listening to a local string quartet's new Phillip Glass recording (Brooklyn Rider).

At the end, look what sort of playful, constructed, triangular portraits they created:



RHI middle school group hard at work.


Left: a collaborative portrait playing with textured, perforated cardboard.


Left: trying out what happens when a nose goes across multiple pieces. Right: using dark shapes to create contrast between the neck and the background.