Napa School for Kids -workshop day at Annantalo in Helsinki on Sunday 17.9. was a huge success! During the eventful day the kids got to colour, illustrate, draw characters and paint canvas bags together with their parents and grandparents.

The day started with a fun Q&A -moment, where the kids got to ask questions from our illustrators. In the beginning the illustrators presented themselves, and Napa’s agent Marjo talked about where you can see illustrators’ works. We got a whole bunch of fun and challenging questions! For example Jussi Kaakinen was asked to explain why boats float, and Terhi Ekebom got to tell what kind of dream she dreamed last night. The awesome Nose of Nenäpäivä was also on stage.

In her dreamy workshop Terhi Ekebom encouraged the participants to share their dream stories and make illustrations out of them.

Parents, grandparents and the kids all got to illustrate together in Ilja Karsikas’ Funny, wild characters-workshop. Ilja has illustrated many children’s books and in his workshop he explained how he develops characters and uses colours to tell stories.

In Jenni Rope’s workshop it was all about making funny flip books! Simple animation was made to a little booklet.

Nature took over the city! In Jussi Kaakinen’s and Nadja Sarell’s participatory artwork the participants got to fill an amazing wall city with self-made trees, leaves and characters.

Marjo Maininki educated the kids about illustrating textile. In this popular workshop everybody got to decorate their own Napa School canvas bag using a lot of colour and different techniques. It was funny how both kids and adults were so enthusiastic!

Matti Pikkujämsä had a super-popular portrait workshop in which he painted families and children. The kids got to decide the background colour themselves.

Amongst the workshops we had a super-cool colouring contest! There were two characters to choose from: a monkey illustrated by Napa School illustrators, or the Nose character of Nenäpäivä. The Nose was helping out the young artists in the colouring station.

Napa’s agent Marjo chose the top three, here are the judge’s comments why she picked these winners:

Casper: The colours are really intense, there is nothing like it in the whole bunch. The surface is full of colour, but yet vivid. The atmosphere in this work is really strong. Stunning piece of art!

Elias: This monkey-piece was coloured beautifully, that’s why it caught my attention. Especially the tail was cute and multi-colour. When you looked closer, you could find that there are a lot of different levels of colour! Beneath the blue surface there was yellow, and under the red surface you can spot a green dot! A lot of imagination was clearly used, which made the jury very happy!

Roosa: In this work the artist had used only one colour, but it works beautifully. The work includes a lot of movement.  Imaginative use of the pencil brought active motion in the work. The artist had ignored the lines, which was lovely. Wow!

A big, warm thank you to everyone who participated, to our workshop teachers, sponsors Raikastamo and Printmotor, and of course to Annantalo! You can click for more pictures here.

Between September and October we also had an exhibition at Annantalo’s book café. The exhibition showed the most creative Finnish illustrators and their works. The exhibition featured seven of Napa School’s illustrators: Ilja Karsikas, Jenni Rope, Matti Pikkujämsä, Jussi Kaakinen, Terhi Ekebom, Nadja Sarell and Marjo Maininki. The exhibition included for example pennants, package designs, maps, forest animals, flip books and dream landscapes.

And hey! If you want to know more about our upcoming events, follow Napa School on Instagram and on our website!