Warm-up

I have been spending the last few days on making samples for my summer camps. It's always good to have samples, even in situations when I seem to have an absolutely clear vision of the projects which I am planning to do with my students. In particular, I like to have a good idea of how long each step takes. Aha, cutting out those circles took me two minutes, in kids' time it would be ten minutes, okay. And sometimes the material that I had intended to use because it appeared to be just perfect, turned out to be completely unworkable. Oh, wow, this is hard to cut, this is ... really ... hard to cut. Okay, got it, now, let's glue it on, why won't it stick, oh c'mon now. That kind of thing. And then, when I have it all figured out, times, materials, techniques, tools, the result may look - sort of boring. That's the worst. Keeps me up all night, thinking hard.

Anyways, this is the little warm-up project that I am going to do in my "Ndebele Houses" camp: a simple mixed media 2-D project that will lay the ground for the next one, when we will create a small version of a 3-D Ndebele house (on the lid of a box) with its characteristic Ndebele painting. Of course, we will do a simplified version, as most Ndebele house paintings are quite complex and detailed.