Inspiring Creativity at our Library

A couple days ago I met up with Sonia Bernard, from the blog The Misadventures of a Library Assistant. She approached me to offer a short free class, to children in the Young Adult Library. I thought this was an amazing idea that would give me the opportunity to interact with creative young people and pass on my knowledge to them. Prior to this experience I had never stepped into the teaching sphere in regards to art. I had always been the student.

Many people are not aware that the library offers free computer classes to persons, none of which incorporated any aspects of art. It was not something that was strict or rigid because the people who took the class were school children who happened to be visiting the library that day. We pitched the idea of partaking in a free class, taught by myself, using the computer facilities provided by the library and we received a few eager responses. The nature of the class was an individual, one on one lesson, which I personally think is the best teaching method. Therefore only two children were selected.

Due to our surroundings, the many children occupying the library that day and other restrictions we were unable to film the class like we had hoped to. We did however, film a short introduction to the collaboration and a brief interview with one of the participating students.

The class lasted approx. twenty (20) minutes for each student, and was based around the graphic design software, Adobe Illustrator. The public computers available were not equipped with the program so a portable version was used from my personal USB flash drive. The class included familiarizing the two students with the program and teaching them the a few standard tools and basic uses.

A few basic illustrator tools

The tools that I touched on were: the selection, rectangle, paintbrush and fill tool. A combination of these would produce basically anything. I remembered first starting out these were the tools that I felt most comfortable using, until I felt confident enough to use to the pen tool which is a very difficult to master but is the basis of all my artwork today.

Here is a very short explanation of the tools illustrated above.
Selection tool: Used to select, move and transform or manipulate the size objects
Rectangle tool:Used to create various basic shapes: rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon and star
Paintbrush tool: Draws organic paths or strokes (lines)
Fill tool: Fills shapes and strokes with a selected colour

When the students were fairly familiar with the tools, I began to show them how they could be used together to draw a simple self portrait. I was completely shocked as to how quickly the students grasped the concept of the program. They were able to move around and create without much help from me. I really believe that their art showed a lot of great potential and I really hope that they keep pursing art, in any shape or form, not only digital. Here is a short interview on youtube that I did with one of the participants.