Libs Art Heart

Exploiting the ‘comfortable’ Xmas tree icon to teach oil pastel blend techniques. Multiple shades of colour, such heavy colouring they had to stand for best practice. Leaning over a 2D piece helps with proportion & perspective. Minimal hand smudging crayon blends. Kids often want to hand smudge everything, but it often wipes away the beautiful textures. Smudge control!

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Fun times as usual in the studio. I plan a variety of techniques & processes so the kids are happy, and they continue to learn. Complex lessons create Fine Art!
Then we absolutely saturated them in PVA & glitter.
See next post for that.

Multi step lessons take a lot of teacher energy to plan, scaffold & deliver. Thankfully I only teach 9 kids over 1.5 hour lessons at a time in my studio.
When I am at school with up to 28, I have to scale it back a bit, and create the same thing over multiple lessons instead of 1.
I’m enjoying teaching both styles these days, keeps me on my toes!

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We’ve been so obsessed by Mulga, so in awe of his style we have explored tracing methods to create these. We love and respect his characters and line work so much, we wanted to do them justice. is a local, Aussie legend for us around here! With familiar Aussie, beach, native icons we all love and the vibrant happy colours, what’s not to love!

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I’ve had a social media holiday for the last few months, and had time to reflect. Over the last 6 years I have poured too many hours and energy into creating posts, for little response. It’s so nice to see the kids work, I know right?
It’s wonderful to share our work so my students work can be displayed, this is a great big, influential art gallery.
I just needed a step back this year.
A nice break over Xmas with my kids and I can re do 2024.

I found a way to get my students work in an exhibition !
It could only be one piece though, a collaboration. Over the last few lessons, the kids have all had a go at drawing, or painting parts of this artwork.
It is a triptych illustration of the local landscape - the sky, the land, and underground. We have included many parts of our imagination, based on what the kids like and see around our local area, and around Annerley.
What we see and what we would like to see!
It pairs with my own artwork in the last image, that I created for our school, Yeronga.
We really like the big brick buildings that all the local schools have.

* 3 Spaces Left Tomorrow *
Kids Holiday Workshop!!
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3 action packed hours of creative art making fun with a specialist art teacher (me!) in my Moorooka studio.
Rainbow Tempera painting with the colour wheel, and detailing a second layer with black pen & ink patterns. Using ancient style bamboo pens & calligraphy pen & nibs dipped in ink. Learning about the mandalas, their naturally occurring round shape in nature, and the importance for Tibetan Buddhist Monks in particular to make their coloured sand mandala installations. 🌈🌈🌈
This workshop is for children aged 6-12, includes making a Pom Pom, eating my fresh homemade popcorn, and taking home an A3 artwork mounted on black paper. These artworks are ready for a frame on the walls to display and reflect with pride for your little artist for years to come!

Direct message me to book in. Early bird and multiple booking discounts available !

* 1 space left *
Art, History, Geography, pirates & illustration! This
holiday workshop marvels at the mythical creatures that early cartographers drew into early maps. Also how a pirate would even have made a treasure map, and carried it around?
Only 9 students will look at historical images & use real feather quills, bamboo quills, pen & ink drawing tools to scratch out their map design. They will age it with tea, and add watercolours. They will snack on my fresh popcorn as the layers dry and mount the map on black card, or roll it up with a red string for playing away the afternoon.
This is a 3 hour workshop for children aged 6-12 with a specialist art teacher and artist (me!). Each child gets feed their own huge serve of my fresh homemade popcorn.
To make a booking, send me a direct message, your child will be booked, pending payment.
Swipe across to see my student samples, note the feathers & pots of ink!

*you can also BYO found washed feather.



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I’m taking a break this school holidays and going to enjoy being at home making with my kids. We have plenty of home projects to do together.
My appologies for not running holiday workshops. I’m going to re charge my creative energy so I can pump out more new fun lessons next term.
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Here’s some of my favourite pics this term!

Millicent met the brief: explore printmaking & mixed media with painted paper collage, watercolour & paint pen. My Teen group extended their printmaking by doing ‘Reduction Printing’. This is where they change, add and re print the plate in a different layers. It creates more depth & interest in the work, though it’s pretty technical.

That plastic bag… can you spot it? Grade 4 student Maeve. Love love love the texture on this canvas background, and the vivid matt ocean blues ❤️❤️❤️
Does this kid know about Jaws the movie?
This is 2 weeks work over 3 hours.
Flick to see the oil painted ocean background - base layer. Yesterday we drew on top with sharpies & paint pens.
Entirely from their inaginations - these ocean illustrations.
Good stories in each of them, narrative.
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kids

They ain’t cheap, but this is what makes the best art… 🤷‍♀️ I continue to buy the good stuff. Bright pigments are a sign of high quality art supplies! They make us happy, and it’s that simple ❤️🌈
Luckily with oil painting we only use a little at a time, and mix it with oil to a smooth painting consistency.
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Here are some process photos of my teen students blissing out with the oil painting process this week.
Does this look fun or messy to you?
Definitely required regular cleaning prompts from teacher to student.

I wasn’t sure if the teens would enjoy this, but I was hopeful. I planned and provided all the scaffolding for them, and look what they made over 2.5 hours a few weeks ago! 🍄🍄🍄🍄🧶🧶
They absolutely loved it too! ❤️❤️❤️

Dry needle felting is a fantastic form of fibre art that is relatively easy to learn and has a lot of scope to be creative and problem solve if it’s going funky on you.
Best of all it’s an ancient art form which uses natural materials - namely sheep’s wool.
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So many tricky little curves to snip out with scissors and sticky glue, constantly cleaning & drying hands. A lot of spacial measuring just hand eye coordination, layering and searching for the perfect colour through my vast collection of recycled painted papers. Problem solving and along do with what I had available. Thankfully I have great quality art supplies so the colour pigments are stunning. Several hours went by…

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It was very humbling to try my best and experience what our kids go through every day in school and art class. I had to be patient & persevere, keep optimistic that it might be slow, but if I keep going it usually works out. I had set aside a couple of hours, I could do it! Once I get in the productive zone of making something, it becomes really fun and I don’t want to stop. The art gets better and better the longer you spend on it!

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I usually set the bar pretty high for my art students, and though I inspire them, scaffold the activity and support them, it still takes a fair bit of courage for them to just get started, especially if they are feeling tired.

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Very humbling for me to understand the courage and energy that we ask from our kids everyday at school. The pride & joy that is felt at completion of a project builds emotional confidence. Confidence can continue to grow when we display the artwork. Student continues to view, reflect & enjoy the finished product as well as the genuine compliments that others can give them when they see it.
Student develops a sense of visual literacy, aesthetic appreciation from making and viewing artworks.

Coloured sand art today going home in little glass vial necklaces!!!! (Mums pretend to be surprised on Mother’s Day)
How exquisite are these?!
I’m literally bursting with joy over these. I going to buy more so all my students can make them.
You never know what I’m going to pull out of the cupboard for art class on a given week 😂😂. Always gonna surprise the kids.