Mail Art + Pen Friends = Dear You Art Project
In these wonderful comics by the 2nd graders at Arivu School I see a world of surprises, witty humor and friendship! The art of visual storytelling shows so much about the creative artists in Mysore, India. I am sure they loved reading the comics from their friends in Espoo, Finland and I KNOW that the Monkeys at Your School can't wait to receive these comics!
Thank you Samanvitha Rao for being such an inspiring and great Dear You Workshop Leader!
Reading the great comics the 6th and 7th graders at Arivu School in Mysore, Indian have made for their friends in Estonia! The comics are full of adventure, humor, and tell so much about the artists' life and personality. I'm loving them! Thank you to Anand Sampan, Samanvitha Rao, Heidi Ruokoniemi, and Pramod Stephen for creating a safe place for children to creatively express themselves!
If you haven't read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, then I'm sure after you see these comics inspired by Eric Carle's book, you will want to! The artists from Moonstone Preschool in Philadelphia, USA did a wonderful job! Their friends at The International School of Antwerp will have some summer fun reading to do :).
The Monkeys have found their other calling as comic artists!
From the looks of their character studies they have a great handle on how to convey emotions and feelings. Lotta drew a story that will happen over the summertime. Lotta's big sister will have a birthday party and she drew how the event will go. Let's all go! Olivia drew all the things she would like to do this summer such as swimming, going on an airplane (lentokone) and playing on the swings. Lumina's character study turned into a perfect way to learn Finnish!
Our friends at Arivu School in India are on summer holiday now, but when they'll return to a package of comics from the Monkeys :).
Have a beautiful summer holiday, everybody!
The Tigers impressed me so much not only with their comic strips, but how they can clearly show emotions in their drawn characters! We first made some character studies from one of the characters in their character. For example, since Paavo was the main character in his comic he decided to do a character study of himself. He drew what he looks like happy, sad, nervous, and even drew himself as if he was going to explode from an oversupply of energy!
Everybody did a wonderful job! The Mice in Vietnam will enjoy reading these during their summer holiday too!
These comics will for sure cheer you up! I wonder if the comic artist's friends in India will understand, relate, and chuckle all the same even if they don't speak Estonian. Aili Vassil, the artists' teacher, showed the work of Herluf Bidstrup as inspiration. Indeed, the Danish cartoonist, did just that!
Evelyn Müürsepp, artist and workshop leader, gives great tips on how to make a successful comic workshop. It seems that her group of 5 year old in Estonia are natural comic artists. I'm sure their friends in Berlin will enjoy reading their stories!
Evelyn said,
It was a really good experience and I loved seeing how intuitively kids grabbed the idea and started producing their own stories :-)
I did now know where to start- as I have always struggled myself with visual storytelling- somehow I end up complicating things to fast. This time I just prepared few things and then kids got it from the air.
Things like:
- got couple of 3-4 image comic strip examples from internet (with and without text)
Then asked kids to tell what do they see. Everyone told it their way and then i told the version what was written on "bubbles"- It gave them example that there are many ways to interpret visual story...
- got some comic books for viewing (Just when waiting for start and afterwards when some got their work done earlier they were looking these)
- printed out some ready made comic "boxes"- just in case
- prepared some themes and draw them some examples, themes like: "my expressions", "things I like to do", "my favourite foods", "my dear ones..." Themes seemed to be good just to have (mostly for teachers who were helping to give instructions for youngest ones). 5 year olds started immediately making their own, pretty complicated 3-6 image stories. It was interesting to see how kids who do not read yet follow the story line. It is not from left to right, but seemed to be that starting image was in center and then story was kind of evolving around that image- it never followed the same path, but went one way in the beginning and for next round just image sequence switched and story could go on like that forever- ie story wasn't linear, it was spiraling :-)
I do not know about others, but for me it was great lesson and I really enjoyed it, so seemed the children and teachers (they were actually also surprised how well kids got the idea and how creatively they interpreted it)
