YAP VI Drawing Lab – Guest Artists

Tattoo artist Ricki Proper and artist Josh Seals who is a Chicago Children’s Museum Lead Play and Learning Facilitator came to the studio for a week of Drawing Lab and introduced some drawing techniques that visitors used to create drawings of monsters that are currently being featured in the museum display case.

Techniques included creating monsters by using different types of lines and by picking three descriptive adjectives out of baskets. Imagine starting with a jagged line. Is that the top of the head or a set of teeth? For the second technique imagine drawing a short, spiky, shy monster or a large, furry, angry one.

Using the children’s suggestions, Ricki demonstrates how to draw a line monster

Josh and a visitor are drawing monsters suggested by descriptive words

Another technique I was excited to see in action was a technique the Chicago Imagists called “exquisite corpses”. I had not heard of the Chicago Imagists before I moved to Chicago but there was a big focus on these artists of the late 60’s this year so I’ve been learning a lot about them and seeing a lot of their work. The “exquisite corpse” technique involves collaborative drawing on a piece of paper folded so an artist can’t see what the previous artist has drawn. At the museum pieces of long paper were divided in thirds for this technique. On the day I volunteered I tried to get some children to do it suggesting that one draw a head and then passing it to the next child to draw the torso and to the third to draw the legs. Two children tried to do it with one drawing the head and legs and one drawing the torso but when it was passed back to the first child he erased what the other child had done and drew his own torso and legs. When I tried it with my nephew and his 6 year old son when I visited them in May my grandnephew looked at the result, said no, and turned the piece of paper over and drew a monster all by himself in the three spaces. Looks like a few people used the technique, though:

More monsters:

And Ricki and Josh’s artist statements: