Sumi Ink Club

At the beginning of the year, my students created collaborative ink drawings inspired by Sumi Ink Club. I discovered Sumi Ink Club and got the idea to introduce them to my students from artist and art teacher Kelsi Quicksall (her youtube can be found here). 

Sumi Ink Club was founded by two artist named Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara. They began this participatory drawing project in Rhode Island in 2005. It started as a collaborative project in their neighborhood, but after creating a website for Sumi Ink Club, the project grew and people began bringing Sumi Ink Clubs into communities all over the world. 

According to the artists the ideal Sumi Ink Club drawing is created by people of all different ages, styles, backgrounds and levels to create one unified drawing. 

For any Sumi Ink Club, the rules are basically the same. Draw what you like, add to what others have drawn, move around and change places, go slowly and make marks thoughtfully, keep drawing open for others to add to (lines with open white spaces), no names and no words. 

For this collaborative project, I showed my students a video introducing Sumi Ink Club. I poured a small amount of ink (I used india ink and it worked just as well) into small cups. For brushes, we used old Crayola watercolor brushes that I normally use as glue brushes. I covered the tables with white paper and gave each table a smaller piece of paper that they were to fill up with drawings first. If they finished early, they were allowed to move onto the bigger paper. 

 Every class in grades K-8 worked on these collaborative drawings. The drawings were then displayed at our annual gala (and fit the gala theme "Black and White" perfectly). These ink drawings are so simple, yet they make a beautiful display! I also displayed them in the school cafeteria and out in our community.

Here is a time-lapse of my students at work.