For what is probably RRR’s final Arts and Wellbeing in-person session, arts psychotherapist and absolute legend Lisa Kelly joined us in Ulster Museum for some mindful drawing and digital art!
The group started off by checking in with how they were feeling and warming up their creative muscles by drawing images with two hands at once!
We then had a quick introduction to using iPads and the tool Procreate before taking a tour of our very own exhibition- RRR: Power to the Young People. Some people chose to make sketch notes of the paintings they were drawn to while others looked around the whole exhibition before we were all introduced to the two paintings we would be drawing from later- ‘Children Playing’ by Doris Violet Blair and ‘Self-Contained Flat’ by Gerard Dillon.
Then we got down to really looking at these paintings! We spent about five minutes looking at the Blair painting (complete with ambient Amelie soundtrack to help us chill) and then thoughtfully drew our own responses to the painting on the iPads; what we noticed, what we felt and what we thought. This produced a range of vibrant, busy and beautiful artworks, complete with our take on the paintings signature bold colours.
We repeated this process with ‘Self Contained Flat’, this time focusing on a word or phrase that might come up during this process. The finished drawings and writing were all reflective of the painting while each one was being completely unique!
For the final hour of the workshop, we used high-res images of the artworks in the collection in our own drawings to create a sort-of digital collage piece. This really put the digital skills we had just learned to use as we continued to use the iPads to create beautiful, interesting and insightful digital art pieces.
We invite you to grab a cuppa, put on some chill tunes and have a good, long look at some of the created artworks below-
