I find children’s drawings simply magical, uninhibited with a simplicity which is so appealing and endearing.
I’m sure many families keep some of their children’s early drawings and I know that at home, when I come across them, I am taken back to the time they were drawn and the inspiration for them, which could have been a walk, a day on the beach or simply a beetle in the back garden!
To celebrate children’s art and to encourage observation and drawing, we thought it would be fun to run a small competition.
Called "Home is Where the Art Is", our idea was to encourage children to think about nature and what it is about nature that inspires them, and to ask them to create a line drawing of this. We said it could be anything - boats, shells, insects, birds, leaves, animals - whatever it was that they thought about in nature.
We thought the prizes ought to be something practical and reusable so we offered each winner the opportunity for their art to be screen printed onto a linen sandwich wrap and sandwich bag in a colour of their choice, so they can be taken to school or used for picnics!
I was absolutely thrilled to get so many lovely entries from primary school children from age four up to the age of 11! A huge thank you to all the adults who encouraged their children and to our local primary schools, Millbrook and Fourlanesend Schools who sent us entries.
It was almost impossible to pick winners, so instead of three winners, we ended up with four! These have been split by age since that seemed to be the fairest way to go about it.
I’m sure you will agree that these are very worthy winners.
Morgan aged 8 created “Crocodile”, which we loved because it was a bold and strong drawing, using carefully drawn lines to clearly depict a crocodile, with lots of movement, from the swishing tale with the scales very clearly defined.
Ebba aged ten created An Animal Map, with her wonderful creatures enjoying a day out in the snow. There is so much movement in this piece and lots of different activities going on. We felt that Ebba had either reflected her own experience or beautifully drawn on her imagination to create this wonderful drawing.
Daniel aged eleven created Owl. A wonderful depiction of an owl, carefully and sympathetically drawn, with real personality and character coming through onto the page.
Finally, Anoushka, aged 4 created “Flowers”, a simply gorgeous depiction of flowers in nature. Flowers was just so appealing since I love drawing plants and like Anoushka I am inspired by the profusion of plants, where shapes become entangled.
I would like to thank everyone who took the time to enter and sent us their wonderful drawings, we really enjoyed receiving them all.
We are considering whether some of these or other designs could form part of a collection for children, particularly for snack bags and sandwich wraps.
Encouraging the use of reusable products for picnics and school pack lunches helps to reduce the use of single use plastic. We hope that everyone enjoys using their new snack bags and sandwich wraps!
Here are a couple of pictures of some of our talented young artists, with their designs.
A huge virtual hug to everyone who has been involved in this project, from our studio staff to our makers to the children themselves, it has been great fun!
Click the links for details of our snack bags and sandwich wraps, or treat yourself to an Eco Lunch Gift Set, great for work, school, picnics or just making sure that you have something to nibble on when you are out and about!
As always if you have any thoughts or comments on this blog, please feel free to get in touch through Facebook or Instagram.
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