I had never conducted any workshops as an illustrator, until Noémie Monier from Baïka Magazine offered me to join her team, and to conceive a creative workshop for children aged 6-12 years old. I had always been curious about doing workshops, so I jumped at the chance right away! What a thrilling project it was!
I was asked to develop a creative workshop that would go in line with one of the magazine’s published issues, the 14th one. The latter had told the legend of the Wawel dragon that I had had the opportunity to illustrate. I was expected to create something revolving around dragons.
My main interest as an illustrator lies in colours and textures, so I thought about developing a workshop that would make the children discover a few technics and some of the art supplies used in the trade.
I set about re-painting the Wawel dragon in a different way than the one I had made for the magazine, and this time left the belly completely blank.
The workshop would consist in filling the belly of the dragon with scales. The children would have to imagine the different shapes, textures, and colours, of the scales, and make them either through painting, drawing, or sticking different scraps of paper etc.
In doing so, they would be able to experiment with watercolour pencils and water-soluble pastels, in addition to regular coloured pencils and water paint.
Here below you can see the empty stomach and colourful dragon :)
Colourful dragon, 2019.
Gouache, water-soluble pastel, and coloured pencil, on mixed media paper. About 22x30cm.
And yesterday was the big day to try out my workshop for the first time, with children in the flesh! The workshop was held during the Festival Vo-Vf, in Gif-sur-Yvette.
I had a jolly good time listening to the children’s imagination running wild, and drawing colourful scales with them. They got enthusiastic and very creative, as you can see below (the second photo from the left shows my humble contribution of dragon’s scales).
(photos taken by the staff of the Festival Vo-Vf).