Here at the SSNC, we wanted to show off the talents of our community. This page exclusively shows a handful of the latest things our community members have been doing, it highlights their own innovation, and their own creativity – all the while, engaging in sessions led by a set of highly-skilled internal and external folk.
Of course, our events page highlights this, and much in the same roundabout way. However, here you can see how our young people set to the task of creating for themselves in making their own stories to sit alongside. Ergo, the title: Your Community Stories Page.
And that is also part of our ethos in community too, you can see this in our about us section when you first land upon our website. Sharing stories is sharing in community. Here within the activities are the stories of our future.
One of the first events we have had in this autumn term, 2023 – in relation to story creation. A drawing session, looking at proportions before drawing, and then formulating stories from the picture(s) created. In this case, our highly-decorated volunteer specialised in the drawing art-style of Realism, and in particular with animals. All of our young people who attended the session thoroughly enjoyed the event and asked lots of questions of our volunteer, which led to fruitful results – as seen below. In fact, before the session was up, both the young people and the team at the SSNC were asking for a return visit. So, we may see more of this wonderful, whimsical human-being yet. If you are interested in the art this volunteer can produce, (like we were), check these social media handles for more information: Nolan Art – Facebook Nolan Art – Instagram (Nolan, 2023) (Nolan Art, 2023)
During the first part of the session, our young people listened attentively following a pre-prepared PowerPoint presentation showing the various steps in achieving a desired drawing of an animal.
On the first slide, we met a dog named Daisy, and our young people (and some staff members), used her as a template for lightly sketching out the proportions in drawing a dog of their own.
Here is the famous Daisy-Doo. No idea if that’s what her owners call her, it just rolls off the tongue, don’t you think? And she is cute. Anyway, she was the blue-print for the various vehicles of creativity our young people set onto paper.
Some of our young people who took part were highly enthused in exploring the art form of Realism and one young lady, where it is not a stretch of the imagination to say she is a future visionary of the arts, set to drawing a rough outline of her family’s well-loved pet. A handsome Husky dog. We are told that her dog can be quite mischievous, and has been known to give her and her family ‘big saucer-plate eyes to get what they want’. She says that most of the time, they give in. It’s too hard to say no to such pleading eyes. What’s pictured below are her drawings, if you look close enough, we think you can see that stare the young lady described, entreating you…don’t stare for too long; there’s much more to see.
Some of our other young people who engaged in the session took the nuts-and-bolts, the bread-and-butter, the fundamentals, the cream of it all…you get the gist. They used the Darling Daisy Blue-Print for other innovative ventures, or they chose to go with the sweet kitten picture and draw up their own version of it. Sadly, there is no image of the kitten taken from this particular live session – the photographer got lost in its eyes. Cats are a bit like that. (If you know what we mean.)
The picture to the left is Bernard’s cat. Bernard came in to this session later on and was blown away. To quote correctly, when shown pictures from the artist’s works he said: ‘They’re not pictures, they’re photographs.’ After seeing further work and a rough draft in front of them, Bernard’s response switched: ‘Wow!’
Being blown away, Bernard drew up his own cat, following on from this feeling. He told us at the time that his cat ruled this world and everyone in it. Just like ancient times. We wonder if he’s been looking at Ancient Egypt at school. He might’ve, but, he also just likes cats. The makings here, and the start of a fantastic fable to come. Bernard, well done!
Next up, some of our young people grew inspired by the slide in the presentation telling them to find their own style. That’s exactly what they did.
One of our young people’s favourite character to draw is Pikachu, and they said that Pikachu is like a wonderful friend. Pokémon is a franchise that has been rolling around in various media for 28 years, since 1996. In fact, some of those people that work with these young people remember the birthing of this franchise. So, to see it inspire a new generation is heart-warming. A Pika -Pica!
Another young person’s work veered into their own creative clustering after trying their hand at drawing the cat. Like we said, the pictures were just too adorable, hard to concentrate on such “awe-some-ness”. Bethany took the image of the cat, and made a Halloween inspired scene. The cat is a black-cat on top of a pumpkin. The pumpkin is planet-like and everything else revolves around it: the critters, the creatures, the demon, the witch, the skeleton, the vampire bat…and the rest. We think Bethany is bursting at the seams with this collage of ideas into her story. What do you think?
Switching back to the drawings of the dogs (and then some), those of which have their stories yet to be realised. We’ve put in this mixture both our young people’s work and SSNC adult supervisors work. See if you can guess which are the young people’s work and which belong to the workers. If you think you know, why not message our Facebook page, and you can also see live feeds for our other future activities.
Author: Emma Penfold – Hall, October 2023
Nolanart (2023) jaydonnolanart Page [Instagram]. Live uploading since April 20th 2020. Available online: Nolan Art (@jaydonnolanart) • Instagram photos and videos [Accessed: 17/10/2023]
Nolan, J (2023) Nolan Art Author’s Page [Facebook]. Live uploading since 30th October 2019. Available online: Facebook [Accessed: 17/10/2023]
