Paintlounge: Art and Lattés

My inspiration for this post comes from Joanne Babalis who introduced me to one of York Region's newest and most unique places to explore and create art! With various canvas sizes, an acrylic paint bar, tools, aprons, and several idea books, Paintlounge offers a new concept called social painting! As stated on their website, we want you to discover how fun and relaxing painting can be, even if you haven't touched art since grade school! The atmosphere is absolutely wonderful! Music playing in the background, a cafe in the middle that offers hot and cold speciality drinks and tasty desserts, and knowledgeable staff that share ideas and techniques - what more could you ask for to feel inspired?

That being said, I couldn't resist jumping on the opportunity to call up some of my closest girlfriends and plan a Friday night painting party! With some anxiety around "what to paint," my girlfriends had no problem feeling inspired once we arrived!

For me, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to create a piece of artwork that I could bring in and share with our class! With my inspiration being clouds, I was inspired by the work of Canadian artist Maya Budan (http://blog.mandybudan.com) and in particular, her piece entitled "One Cloud." Not only does her work connect to our class' current exploration of lines in art, but her interpretation of a cloud was fascinating - I couldn't resist!

Maya describes her inspiration for this painting on her blog: "I'm exploring the way clouds interact with the sky. Sometimes the cloud seems separate from the sky and sometimes it is clearly just an extension of it." 

With this in mind, I hope my interpretation of Maya's work will provoke our students to continue to engage with our Cloud inquiry from an art perspective and beyond. For my girlfriends, I hope they continue to feel inspired and join me the next time I venture back to Paintlounge to explore my creative side again!

In the coming weeks, we hope to use my painting as a catalyst to pull together other artistic representations of clouds through a class "Cloud Book," exploring transparencies with student's quotes about their cloud, plasticine, and our own acrylic canvases to paint on! We also hope to create our very own model of a cloud to hang in our classroom! There is certainly lots to look forward to!

As for my girlfriends, it's safe to say that they all left Paintlounge on Friday night feeling invigorated, relaxed, proud, and inspired! A Friday night success! As for Monday morning, I couldn't wait to share my experience with Ms. Theis (DECE - @h_theis), Mrs. Abalos (@mel4education), my Principal Mr. Collins (@gregcollins2010) and most importantly my students. I have yet to show them my painting so I'm really looking forward to seeing their reactions and hearing their comments! Who knows? Maybe Lorna Jackson P.S. will create their very own Paintlounge for students? It's in the works...so stay tuned!

Paintlounge: www.paintlounge.ca
Follow them on twitter: http://twitter.com/paintlounge