Walking with Betty: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Alberto Giacometti and School Holidays...

Hello!

Such a long time since I've posted, hope you're ok!

The school holidays were really enjoyable and busy too.

On Monday I took my two younger girls off to The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia in Norwich only to discover that the drop-in Art sessions were on everyday apart from Monday! We still had a fun time though just walking round the campus in search of the bank. The UEA, and a suspect every other campus, has such an out-of-this-world feel about it somehow, or maybe its just out of MY world! The UEA is very interesting architecturally which definitely adds to this feeling but it was also so alive with young people (mostly), at the start of their life journey, I felt quite invigorated by it. Mind you, it was extremely cold and breezy shuffling along those aerial walkways so it could've been that that invigorated me!

After having a delicious breakfast with good friends in Norwich, we ventured back to the SCVA the next day, and took a bracing dog walk noticing signs of Spring in the UEA grounds first.

I haven't actually looked around the Sainsbury Centre since having some of my Theoretical Studies sessions there as part of my degree. It was just as I remembered it and we had a lovely time there. The activities were loosely based around the work of Alberto Giacometti a Swiss artist with a very distinctive style. He was born in 1901, died in 1966 and used sculpture, drawing, painting and printmaking. He was also a friend of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury who bought a lot of his work.

Giacometti liked to hold a hard-2H pencil, very close to the top which resulted in very fine and almost scratchy marks and therefore, energetic and dynamic drawings. I like to do this with charcoal and a soft pencil-4B and softer, as I have less control of the marks I'm making giving a degree of unpredictability to the drawing.

Giacometti also liked to draw a frame around his work, so when displayed there is a frame within a frame. He found that this helped him focus on the subject matter as he worked.

Below is a video of Giacometti painting a portrait which you may like to watch. You can clearly see his distinctive technique in it. I also think that he very much resembles the people he portrays, which is so often the case.

One of his portraits was rendered using the technique we all tried out as children, that of drawing with a candle and then painting over it with water colours, we decided that this would be a fun activity to try at home later, the results can be seen below.

I was intending to write about the inspiring talk I heard by Marilyn Brocklehurst of the Norfolk Children's Book Centre on the importance of reading with your children, but this post is long enough and I don't want to bore you to tears, so I'll write about that tomorrow.

Ooooh, and very quickly, I now have a Facebook page-Walking With Betty set up. I know that some of you have tried to leave comments on here and its been a bit tricky, so please do leave one on Facebook if you'd like to. Also, I'm now on Pinterest, again as Walking With Betty, so do follow me there if you fancy it too. Its very addictive!