Young artists get to know themselves through self-portraits

12 Oct, 2022

Young artists have been learning how to unleash their creativity at two recent workshops at the Mangawhai Artists Workspace.

A children’s workshop on Painting Self Portraits was one of four Give It A Go workshops offered by Mangawhai Artists with sponsorship from the Creative Communities Scheme.

With the original workshop oversubscribed four times, a second workshop was hastily added to the programme, this time with sponsorship from the Lynn Middleton Education Fund. In both cases the sponsorship enabled the workshops to be delivered at a nominal cost to the participants.

Under the experienced and careful guidance of tutor Rosina Kamphuis, 20 young people learnt the key ingredients for painting a self-portrait. The satisfaction of creating their own work was further amplified with an exhibition of their combined work at the Workspace over the last weekend.

“It’s been very inspiring to have so many children who want to make art,” says Rosina. “The enthusiasm of the children was great and also the intensity with which they worked! We sketched in the morning, making beautiful pen sketches, which was a lot of energy. In the afternoon we painted, starting off with a base sketch which the children then filled with colour. There wasn’t a set way of doing things. The important thing was for the painting to say something about themselves, something that was important to them or something that they loved.

“What was really good was to be able to impart to the children that everyone has their own unique way of drawing and painting. To that end we had a table displaying work of contemporary and older artists – their portraits – so that the children could see diversity of style, see that everybody does work differently and how exciting that is. That was an inspiration point for their drawing, if they wanted to use it.

“Some of the children had brought hand mirrors and they used these to study their faces and shoulders. This drew them in to see who they were, what they looked like. They could use this or they could change it if they wanted to. They could make a fun portrait – it didn’t need to look exactly like them.”

The result was a room full of exciting work from young minds, showing that the state of youth art is in a positive space.

To keep up to date with learning opportunities with Mangawhai Artists check out the Learning Opportunities tab on mangawhaiartists.co.nz

Tutor Rosina Kamphuis (background) and a room full of exciting work from young minds. PHOTO/SUPPLIED