By PAT BURKETTE
Driftwood Contributor
Budding young Salt Spring artists have spent November weekends at ArtSpring to participate in Exploring Nature’s Beauty through the Art Work of Robert Bateman, this year’s art enrichment program for children and youth.
Using Bateman’s art as a starting point for their own explorations in drawing and painting animals and birds in natural settings, the student artists will exhibit completed works in ArtSpring’s Bateman Gallery from Dec. 8 to 10. Hours are 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Friday and Sunday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m on Saturday. Bateman will attend the Friday, Dec. 8 opening event.
For four years, with donors like Country Grocer and the Salt Spring Foundation, ArtSpring’s annual art enrichment program has been offered free to art students aged six to 16 and led by guest artist Tracy Harrison.
For this year’s Bateman-themed program, each student chose a bird or animal from a Bateman painting, and put their own spin on it by sketching different postures and settings.
“After completing many sketches, students make clay sculptures of their animal to get 3D aspects of it,” said Harrison. Following modelling, students create black paper silhouettes of their animal, so that they can scale up their drawings prior to painting on canvas.
For much more on this story, see the Dec. 6, 2017 issue of the Gulf Islands Driftwood newspaper, or subscribe online.