Durham Illustrator Shares Art with Students

On Friday, April 26 the students at John Lyman School were fortunate to work with famous, local illustrator David Wenzel. Mr. Wenzel spent the morning working with small focus groups of students in grades 1-4 and then had a working lunch with the Art Board members. In the afternoon, he met with the kindergarteners and concluded the day with a presentation to the whole school.
 
First through fourth grade students who were interested in working with Mr. Wenzel wrote letters to apply for a spot in his focus groups. In each focus group he taught students how to use illustrations to tell a story. He did a demonstration of how to use perspective and overlapping to give definition to drawings. Mr. Wenzel met with the students individually as they created illustrations for stories they had written.
 
The Art Board had a pizza lunch with Mr. Wenzel. He spoke with the student artists about how to interpret an author’s story through their illustrations. The role of the Art Board members is to add illustrations to other students’ writings that have been accepted to the school’s Writers Wall. The students were excited to bring Mr. Wenzel’s ideas back to their weekly Art Board meeting.
 
The kindergarteners had their own session with Mr. Wenzel.  He taught them how to use basic shapes to draw the animals the students had chosen for their individual project work. The students went back to their classrooms to implement the strategies to their own illustrations.
 
In the afternoon Mr. Wenzel provided the focus for the students’ weekly assembly share. He treated the whole school to a presentation of his published work and a demonstration of his drawings. The highlight of the assembly was his step-by-step lesson on how to create a dragon using the simple shape of an ice cream cone. The students proudly displayed their masterpieces as they paraded out of the assembly!
 
David Wenzel’s visit was a true integration of the arts. Students learned from a master artist and were able to immediately apply the acquired skills to their daily class work. Parents and local residents are invited to see the work the students created at our biennial Share Fair being held at John Lyman School, on Thursday, May 9, 2013 from 6 to 8 p.m.