This art activity by Olivia Joyce is built around 8-year-old Li Lingfei’s Artist’s Portfolio, published in Stone Soup’s March 2018 issue. Use the link to open the portfolio in a separate window and look closely at the images as you read Olivia’s responses to Lingfei’s work, and think about her drawing activity ideas. Stone Soup publishes many intriguing and entertaining submissions of poetry, short stories, and book reviews. While the writing is often incredible, the artwork Stone Soup publishes is especially fascinating to me. I love seeing how artists express themselves and take on specific styles in their art. The work of the artist Li Lingfei, age 8, stood out to me in particular for its style and imagination. Li Lingfei’s portfolio was published in Stone Soup’s March 2018 issue. It included watercolor paintings of entire worlds that she had imagined, as well as a construction of a house in the shape of a cat. This piece, titled “Cat House,” caught my attention first because of its unique geometrical design and patterns. Lingfei mentions that “Cat House” is inspired by a famous building in Spain, called Casa Batllo. Some artists might feel concern about using other art for inspiration, but I find that this is one of the best ways to create something new and unique! “Cat House” and Casa Batllo might bear some similarities (Casa Batllo’s roof resembles a dragon, and “Cat House” resembles a cat), but their look and style is markedly different from one another. As I looked more closely at all of Lingfei’s work, I saw that the bright indigo and yellow color scheme appeared in her paintings in addition to “Cat House.” The similar colors provide a thread that connects all of her work together, making it feel more united and whole. When I examined each of Lingfei’s paintings individually, I saw that they told stories and included images of multiple people and creatures. Even now, each time I look at one of her paintings, I observe something new. For example, in “My Chinese Dream,” I noticed the most obvious images of two planets and a rocket first, but the second time I looked at it I noticed the Octopus King waving from the corner, and the yellow mist that surrounds each planet. In this way, Lingfei’s artwork is dynamic, providing depth and leaving room for many interpretations. It is clear to me that Lingfei let her imagination guide her when creating these works, which I felt was essential to creating something interesting and beautiful. My favorite of her paintings is “Sky City.” It shows a city inside a jellyfish, floating in space. Aliens or people fly in a squid spaceship outside of the city, and within the bubble, hamburger hovercrafts and ice cream rockets zoom around mushroom- and jar-shaped buildings. The more I look at this painting, the more curious I become about it. Can the city move across the galaxy, or is it more like a planet with an orbit? Is the mushroom building really a mushroom, or just shaped like one in the way “Cat House” is shaped like a house? Would people be happier if they lived in “Sky City,” or on Earth? I think that it is important for art to raise questions and spark curiosity, and Li Lingfei’s artwork did exactly that. As a response to Lingfei’s work, I’d like to ask our readers to try, in a single image, to create a world as complex and detailed as Lingfei has created in each of her images. To do so, you should plan ahead. You might begin by writing out a brief description of the place you’re imagining—and then drawing it. Or maybe you just want to tell your mom or your dog about what you’re planning to draw. Either way, have a plan in mind so that you make sure to have room for everything you want to include in your drawing! Once you’re ready to begin, remember to use the full range of colors and to fill up the entire page—and then submit to Stone Soup! We can’t wait to see your masterpieces! Author Bio: Olivia’s favorite books are the Harry Potter series, which she has loved since elementary school, but she also loves The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and anything written by Sharon Creech. She is in her third year at UC Santa Cruz where she studies literature and writes poems and stories. At schoo,l you might catch her eating too many chocolate croissants or sprinting to catch the bus.
art activity
Saturday Newsletter: September 23, 2017
“100 Me’s”. Sophia Lee Bartolini, 11 A Stone Soup selfie contest winner, Spring 2017 A note from William Rubel Selfie Contest #2! Last spring we had a very successful selfie contest. Now it’s fall, we thought it was time to bring it back. Our second Selfie Contest has the deadline of Monday, November 6. The top five winners will receive a prize of a $10 Amazon gift certificate, and will be published in a future issue of Stone Soup. As all of you know, a “selfie” is self-portrait. It is you telling a story about yourself through a photograph. There is a long tradition of artists making portraits of themselves in drawing, in photography, and in painting–the wonderful self-portrait below, painted by Goya in around 1785, could be seen as an early version of a full-body selfie. The mirrors Goya needed to pull off his self-portrait are out of sight, while one of the winners of our spring contest, pictured above, used mirrors as an integral part of her composition, but both of them show us the medium they used to make the work: Goya his paints and easel, and Sophia Lee Bartolini her camera phone and bathroom cabinet mirrors. The ability to take a photograph of yourself while holding a camera that at the same time enables you to see what you are doing is entirely new. You are the pioneers. In one or two hundred years people looking back at photography from this period and will see these kinds of selfies as an exciting new art form. There is room for serious portraits in this contest and we definitely want to see a few photographs in which you compose yourself and look into the camera. But there is plenty of room to be playful too, if that’s who you are. There is a long tradition of artists dressing up in costume before making their self-portraits, and costumes are a great way to say something about yourself. Make a portrait of yourself doing something you love, or are good at; your costume could be a uniform or an outfit for a special activity (like Goya’s hat with candles that helped him see what he was doing as the light of the day dimmed). You can also be dramatic. Photograph yourself in profile. Get motion into your picture. Surprise yourself–and surprise us. As with every artistic endeavor I think you will find that taking risks will pay off! You are permitted to up load up to three images. You can make them each completely different from each other or you can send in three images that are linked in some way. Send in your entries here. Please submit in the Artwork category, and include ‘Selfie Contest, Fall 2017’ in your title. Francisco Goya, Self-Portrait Before the Easel (Autorretrato ante el caballete), circa 1785. Oil on canvas, in the collection of Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Spain. Forthcoming issues If you haven’t worked on your food stories and recipe submissions for the December Food Issue, please try to spend some time on them this weekend. As I’ve mentioned in previous Saturday Newsletters, a big part of a recipe submission is the headnote–the narrative you write to introduce the recipe. In addition to recipes, we are looking for photographs, drawings, paintings, stories, and poems all about food. If there is a cookbook, food show, food movie or painting you like, then please review it and upload it in the submissions review category. We are beginning to get used to publishing monthly. It is so exciting! It feels as though we have only just published the September issue, and it’s already almost time to launch October. In fact, this week we are proof-reading the PDF of the October issue ready to publish on the 1st of the month, and we have just finalized the writing and art that’s included in the November issue. December is almost complete, giving us everything we need to produce our first print Annual. We hope you are having as much fun this new school year as we are developing your new monthly Stone Soup, and can’t wait to share what you create! Until next week, William From Stone Soup September/October 2000 The Real Mr Vankos By Laura Aberle, 12 Illustrated by Jane Westrick, 12 When Mr. Vankos painted a giant portrait of himself on the side of his house, I heard many mentions of him being totally out of his mind. Everyone in my neighborhood had a house of solid color with shutters of the opposite shade. It seemed to anger them that someone would paint their house more than two colors, like it was a sacred tradition to be dead boring. With so many people against him, I had no reason to disagree with the statement. My natural curiosity got the better of me, though, as usual. For as long as I could remember I had been expected to find things to do, to play by myself if I must. My parents were always working and I was left alone with Anita, who had her hands full with all the housework, and my three younger brothers. When my friends weren’t available, or when no one could drive me somewhere, I would just wander around and try to catch pieces of conversations between the neighbors or see who was putting a new addition on their house next. So I have always been extremely curious—even nosy—and I was no less than captivated by the strange man with the colorful house. “Who would do such an absurd thing?” my nanny Anita muttered early one morning as she was ironing my shirt. “That lunatic was slaving over some portrait for weeks, knowing the only thing he’ll get from it is the whole block thinking he’s nuts. Well, I tell you,” she continued with a littie smirk, “he succeeded in doing that.” She pressed the last crease out of the shirt and handed it over to me, sighing. “That house was so nice before he moved in,” she breathed, putting her hands on her wide hips. “He must have been a very deprived child, wanting all this negative attention. Why doesn’t
Selfie Contest Winners, Fall 2016
Nathaniel Canon, 7, California Self Portraits These are the winners of our first Selfie Contest. Never in history have so many people taken so many photographs of themselves as we are doing now. I think many of us think of “selfies” as self-indulgent throw-away pictures. But that is not what you sent me. What you sent in were thoughtful photographs. I want to thank everyone who participated in this contest. There wasn’t a single entry that did show an effort being made to use the humble selfie as a venue for meaningful self-expression. There is clearly lots more that can be done with selfies. I will run this contest again. Special thanks to the parents who worked with their children to help them realize their visions. As with a lot of great art — pieces that may look spontaneous, were not. I could write about these pictures for hours! Enjoy! And, again, thank you for participating. The winners are: Katie Sohacki, 13; Oliver Girouard, 13; Annie Melkote, 11; Lucy Humble, 11; Peyton Jacobe, 11; Darrius Canon, 11; Sophia Lee Bartolini, 11, Nathaniel Canon, 7. Each of the prize winners receives $10, our thanks for participating, and our congratulations for a job well done. “Bohemian,” Katie Sohacki, 13, North Carolina “Slipping on a Banana Peal,” Oliver Girouard, 13, Washington “Rise,” Annie Melkote, 11, New Jersey “Me in a Tree With Jazz Hands,” Lucy Humble, 11, New York “Halloween Night,” Peyton Jacobe, 11, Texas Untitled, Darrius Canon, 11, California “100 Me’s,” Sophia Lee Bartolini, 11, New York Untitled, Nathaniel Canon, 7, California
