Summer Art School at Global Kids Place in Sangenjaya

I had the opportunity to do my own series of art classes over the summer break at GKP. Designed the whole curriculum in the way I wanted and thought the workshops by myself, which was something new and exciting!

The workshops were designed in a way that the kids are introduced to 1 artist per class, and we'd create the work on a B3-sized paper using the artist's choice of medium and technique. We also learned 1 SDGs topic relevant to the artist per workshop in English! It was heartwarming to hear the kids saying they recognized seeing the SDGs signs all around the town at the end of summer school.

The summer art workshops ran for 2.5 hours and were divided into two sessions: AM junior class for ages 4~7, and PM senior class for Ages 8+.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Watercolour Paint

Starting the week with a classic paint-along of one of Georgia O'Keefe's abstract landscape paintings, Lake George Reflection.

The kids all chose their own colours as I showed each of the steps one by one. They learnt the basics of how to use watercolours paints, and how to play with the intensity of the colours by adding more or less water to the paints.

Ken Done

Oil pastels + Inkwash

We explored Ken's colourful oceanic paintings for this workshop. The kids saw that the way Ken painted the sea creatures wasn't exactly realistic, but you can make out each of the creatures by adding a key feature to them.

We looked at some real aquatic creatures&plants and drew our own under the sea scenery in oil pastels. Blue ink wash was added on top to emulate the ocean at the end.

The kids were encouraged to use their own imagination for this workshop, and the results were marvelous! Each of the artworks turned out completely different as seen in the photos.

Keith Haring

Watercolour Paint + Black Markers

Keith's action people were an absolute hit with the kids! And they were in perfect timing with Tokyo Olympic's pictograms. Kids were able to get the idea of showing the movement via rhythmic lines right away, so we went straight into creating our Keith-inspired artwork.

First, we drew our action people and some of Keith's iconic symbols in pencils and coloured them in watercolours. Then we went over with black markers and added the rhythmic lines!

Andy Warhol & Michel Jean-Basquait

Collage work+Acrylic paint drips

What's more fun than learning about not just 1 artist, but 2? That's exactly what I wanted to show the kids for this Andy Warhol+Basqauit workshop! This workshop was more of an experimental-based exercise, focusing more on the process rather than the result.

Here, I had the kids draw items that were popular at their school (and of course had to add in a couple of Andy's tomato soup cans!) Next, we went through magazines to look for pieces of articles and photos for the collage component of the art. Then we got all the pieces together on white paper and painted over the collage with acrylic primary colours like how Michel had collaborated with Andy on their artwork.

Shomei Yoh

Gouache Paint

Ending the summer art school with another follow-along painting by Shomei. Gouache paint was something none of the kids have used before, so it was really exciting showing them how gouache is different from other mediums we had been using during the other summer art classes. (Also, my own personal favourite but promise no biases!)

We chose to paint Shomei's Sunny the bunny from the picturebooks he illustrated, and off we went! There was 1 junior high school student during the AM class, which we decided to do something a little more challenging and chose a painting alone house.

Although the steps were quite straightforward, this workshop was probably the most complex in terms of the technicality of the medium. Honestly though, the kids did an amazing job using gouache paints, something even adults struggle with!