Young artists create their own ‘village’ 

Children attending an art camp last week ran by Geraldine Martinez and held at Gibraltar Art Studio designed their own imaginative villages, that started by learning the building blocks of drawing and painting while creating communities filled with various characters.  

The workshops focus on simple shapes, foreground and background, and the use of scale to suggest depth rather than strict realism.  

“Planning the village requires paying attention to the basic blocks of drawing and painting,” Ms Martinez told the class. “Simple shapes and when there is overlap, there is scale.”  

 Each child is working on their own village, deciding who lives there and what their homes and streets look like.  

 “If I’m walking around the village, and I’m a mini person, who am I going to find in there? Is there a wizard in there? Is there a magician? Is there a scientist? Is there a baker?” she told the Chronicle.  

“I’m giving them the tools and it’s up to them how they put the tools together.”  

The emphasis throughout is on individual creativity and personal style rather than copying a set design.  

“Everyone’s style is their own,” she said. “I’m not getting involved in their style. I want the art and style to come out of them this year.”  

To support the young artists, the camp provides a wide range of resources, from “summer challenges” based on themes such as nature and monsters to shape-building guides and architectural details.  

These help children add life and character to their villages, right down to topical touches.  

“If they’re a little bit stuck there’s more things to add to the village. So maybe they want to add an air conditioning unit because it’s very tropical,” she said, adding that she had “gone a bit OTT with resources this year”.  

The group also looked at different towns and villages for inspiration, using these references to develop their own ideas rather than copy them. The priority, Ms Martinez, is that “the village has to have life and come from them”.  

A nine-year-old art student has imagined a car-free Gibraltar-style village where family, friends and even pets live together “living their best life”. 

Ellie Gonçalves, taking part in her first art class, explained that her parents had always encouraged her to draw, which inspired her to join the workshop. 

“What made me want to do it is how my parents always encouraged me to draw,” she said. 

Her village was inspired by Gibraltar but set “a bit in the past”. 

Her imaginary village is set around “1985 or 1980”, with one notable difference to present day, there are no cars, only bicycles. 

Asked whether cars existed at that time or were simply not allowed, she clarified that they were banned inside the village. 

The village is populated by people and animals from her own life.  

“My mum, my friend, my best friend, my brother, my sister, my cats, lots of them,” she said. 

Ellie places herself in the scene. 

“I’m nine-year-old,” she said, adding that she is “living [her] best life” there. 

Asked why someone might choose to move to her village, Ellie said: “We don’t have rations. We have lots of food, and even when we run out, we can just still go outside of the village gates and get food.” 

Eleven-year-old Jude Pozo is swapping school art classes this summer for art camp, where he has designed an imaginative village that blends sport, art and the fair 

Jude described his painting as “more like a sporty village” with a the atmosphere of “feria”. The village, dated 2018 in his drawing, brings together sporting arenas, Ferris wheels and an iconic artistic resident. 

Asked who lives in his village, Jude said, “Mona Lisa.” He went on to explain that the famous artwork is on display there, and not that she is alive and living there. 

Although he is not a resident of the village himself he sees his role as that of a planner who has been “commissioned” to bring it to life. He said his main source of inspiration for the project was Ms Martinez. 

Seven-year-old Sofia Tinca created an imaginative village set among mountains and wildlife. 

Asked why she had chosen to attend the class, she said that her interest in drawing started when she was younger. 

She is working on a drawing of a village that has “has loads of mountains,” adding that this was because she likes hiking. 

In her village, there are no human residents, only animals. 

“Animals,” she replied when asked who lives there. 

The village does include little cottages, but the animals live outside rather than inside the buildings. On further probing she agreed that the cottages could be used by tourists who might travel to this mountain village to help look after the animals and enjoy the scenery. 

Sophia also described the mountains as being covered in green moss. The village is not based on any real location, she said, and exists purely in her imagination. 

When asked why someone would choose to visit her village, she said: “Because it has loads of mountains, because they can go hiking.” 

Eight-year-old Alisa Ovcharenko told the Chronicle that she has been surrounded by creativity for much of her life, having done art when she lived in Ukraine, Poland, and now here. 

In Poland, she recalled, art was already part of her everyday routine. 

“In Poland, we had like lessons of art in school, and then I had like a club where a teacher comes to my home and we paint,” she said. 

Adding that since moving here she has taken part in summer camp art classes and now attends regular art lessons with more than one teacher. 

Asked what she enjoys most about art, she said: “Being creative. Like you can create whatever you want.” 

That ability to create forms the heart of her latest project a village full of ghosts, called ‘Ghost Age Village’ no real people.  

She said it is a small cottage-style place inhabited that even has its own shop, which she says she based on a well-known store: 

In her village the rules of who can see whom are very clear. 

“Ghosts see ghosts, but people don’t see ghosts,” she said. 

“When you’re a ghost, you can see people, but when you’re a person, you can’t see ghosts.” 

Animals, however, are different but it is still not straight forward. 

“The real animals which are just naturally animals, they can see ghosts, but people which turn into animals can’t see those,” she said. 

Although she does not live in Ghost Age Village herself, she admits she would like to and has come up with a way to make that possible: 

“I can just have like some magic power, and then I can turn into a ghost. And when I want, I can turn into a person,” she said.  

She also noted the practical advantages to having ghostly powers. Talking about school break time, she said: “I could just disappear because we’re not allowed to run, so I can just disappear and be actually running, but no one would see that.” 

The next art camp is August 17-21 with only one space left. To book visit www.gibraltarartiststudio.com