THE TASTE OF MEMORY. 2 11/19/20

 

We welcomed a new student to our class today, Margaret, who has been our student at LaGuardia Senior Center. Spica and I wish to thank the generosity of Homecrest Community Services, Karen Zhou, Executive Director, Chip Ma, Center Director and Zhikang Ling (Hong), Administrative Assistant for making this happen. It’s one of the benefits of virtual technology that we can invite seniors from diverse locations. And as a matter of fact, I will be “zooming” from Sydney, Australia for our next class! 

 

We warmed up by making square and rectangular shapes with our hands and body. Imagining a large piece of paper was on either side of us we used our hands to shape squares. Next, we stretched upwards to imaginary paper on the ceiling, repeating the exercise and finally we bent our knees to draw squares on the floor.

 

Participants learnt how to create 3-D organic shapes, numbers and letters by perspective drawing and practice techniques of shading leant last week to add depth. Using these new skills, they drew four Chinese characters. In order to draw from life, seniors found one cubed and one cylindrical shaped object in their home. They drew each from different perspectives, carefully observing what angles they could see. In order to draw the object in proportion a frame was sketched first which reflected the proportions of the object at the angle at which it was held. Seniors used this frame as a guide in which to draw each object. Music played while they shaded their drawings.

 

Finally, four new objects were found, which were not geometric in shape and which could all first on the paper together. Seniors were guided to trace each object by holding the pencil vertically above it while outlining its shape. Next details such as logos, lines, markings were added. Seniors used the techniques they had learners to add dimension to each object. As we won’t be meeting for two weeks, we encouraged them to complete their drawings and take a photo and send it to us. We are excited to see their original artwork.

 

Thursday, November 26 is Thanksgiving Day so we will not have our regular class. We wish all our students, their family and friends as well as the staff at Bensonhurst Senior Center a very safe and happy Thanksgiving.