What a wonderful feeling of Spring in the air.
Today I spent the day at Ipswich Art School working with a couple of groups of children on illustrating a piece of poetry.
The wonderful creative and some quite lively bunch, worked hard on creating images to illustrate The Owl and the Pussycat. I read the beautiful poem out to them, many of whom hadn't heard it before (to my amazement). I got them to really listen to the words, then picture those words, paint their mental images and to then set their images down onto paper. I gave them images to work from and the Ipswich Museum kindly loaned us a beautiful taxidermy Tawny Owl to draw from.
I even tried to catch them out with the question "what does a Bong Tree look like?" That's the beauty of Edward Lear's Nonsense poems, they are so open to interpretation.
Well the results were wonderful, such vivid imaginations. They created some beautiful images, varied and quirky and knowing no boundaries.
That's the joy of being a creative, we can explore beyond the ordinary, push back the boundaries of everyday life, explore new worlds, new and varied possibilities.
After all when did you, in reality, rummage at the back of the old wardrobe and find another whole new world lurking behind the old fur coats and scarfs?
