Exploring Paint: A Sensory Experience

Paint is a delightful material. Young artists often use all of their senses to explore different art materials, and paint is no exception. Artists explore different tools for mixing or applying paint on paper. This colorful medium will inevitably entice the young explorer to discover with more than sight. Engaging all senses, paint often ends up on the hands, providing a truly sensory experience!

Preventing a Glazing Daze

Glazing can sometimes be a tedious activity. There is a lot of hard work involved and because the pieces have to be fired in the kiln in order to see the true color of the chosen glaze, the reward for this hard work is delayed. One young artist decided to organize the glazing of her clay pieces in her sketchbook. She first drew pictures of the artworks to be glazed. Then she used pastels to assign each piece a color. As she glazed, she used her color sheet as a checklist. What a creative way to stay focused in an activity that requires much patience!

Sharing Inspiration

The studio offers young artists many opportunities for nurturing an artistic community. It is interesting to see the influence that certain qualities of one media have on an artist’s use of another. 

One such artist observed another sewing with felt, a needle, and thread and was motivated to produce clay pieces that, when fired and glazed, could then be embellished with sewing. 

Small holes were poked through the bottom of a pinch pot as well as a clay slab. Working independently, the artists maintain a sense of community by learning and gaining inspiration from one another.

This community of young artists is valuable in children’s social learning within the art world as well as society. This group has shown an increasing interest in sharing artwork. Artist trading cards are the prefect vehicles for exchanging art work. They offer young artists a chance to learn from social interactions and gain a better understanding of the art world and the greater society.

Clay Play!

 

 Young artists energetically work with clay by flattening it and using tools to experiment with different ways of manipulating the material. Often times actions are repeated such as scraping the clay to create textures and smoothing it out several times. In doing so, children further develop fine and gross motor skills as well as cause and effect sequencing.

This young artist has used a popsicle stick to create a bumpy, criss-cross texture in a flat clay slab, one that she can enjoy visually as well as by lightly running her fingers across the grooves.

Sticking to the theme of maps, mazes and paths, another young artist created multiple slabs with a path that connects them all. Little clay balls can roll through the path, which captured the attention of a fellow artist. 

 The two then engaged in parallel play as they added to the complexity of the paths and toke turns rolling the clay balls through their creation.

This engagement, observing others at work, working side by side, and interacting together to participate in a shared activity with art material, is at the center of the young individuals belonging to an artistic community.

 

The French call it painting with glue…

That explains why coloring the glue can be a great incentive for toddlers to collage! Because these young art explorers are very focused on the qualities of the material, a bright blue or green glue provides some exciting visual stimuli to the material. Choosing from our seemingly endless supply of paper scraps, fabrics, buttons, and threads, young artists are free to explore the many possibilities of collage. For them, the act of painting the glue and placing the scraps are two separate activities.

 

 Once children become a little more familiar with the material, collage and paint can be combined to create an interesting mixture of marks and textures on the paper. This art explorer is seen experimenting with glue, scraps of handmade paper, and stamped blue and red paint. An imaginative mixture of textures and color shuffle across the paper.

Collaborative Maps and Mazes

Young artists minds are bursting with ideas. The studio is a great place to harness this creativity and encourage the use of a variety of materials to explore these ideas. A recent recurring theme has been maps and mazes. Students enjoy constructively playing together with blocks to create mazes, maps, and games from their creations. 

 This interest in cooperating to build mazes has at times been further developed by offering large sheets of paper along with markers to create plans for the construction of the maze. This collaborative effort to design opens opportunities for dialogue that revolves around deciding how the blocks create paths, traps, and dead ends. This cooperative and constructive play is an excellent example of how the studio environment supports the development of necessary social, cognitive and physical skills! Children build relationships by engaging with the materials and others, which is key to the creative and learning process.

(Follow up with these artists as they finish the year!)

Art Explorers, Thursday, 11.3

The first day of a new session, a very enthusiastic young artist was thrilled to play with clay today. Observing the young artist, I was reminded of the studio thinking habits model, developed by Project Zero and adapted for Art at the Center children’s studio classes. The young artist is seen developing craft and engaging and persisting. She was enjoying pushing big balls of clay together and taking them apart again, carefully inspecting where they were stuck together and how easily they pulled apart depending on the amount of pressure she used to push them together. She is developing fine and gross motor skills and hand/eye coordination as well as learning about cause and effect when pushing the material together and pulling it apart. She broke off smaller pieces from one ball and squished them into the other. At one point a few bigger balls together with some much smaller pieces made a “pig”. Looking very proud of her achievement she exclaimed, “Wow! Look at that!” and began showing her grandmother as well as other adults working with clay around her. Her grandmother asked a few questions about the creation and offered her some more pieces encouraging her to continue creating. Her grandmother’s role as a supportive facilitator allows her to engage in the creative process and discover. She then began collecting as much clay as she could and lined the balls in a row in front of her. Poking sticks into the different balls of clay offered more for the young mind to marvel at. The young artist’s use of popsicle sticks opens several possibilities for different interactions with the clay. In her experimenting with clay, this young artist is developing important fine and gross motor skills as well as learning cause and effect. The use of tools allows for further experimentation with the clay. The experience of being in charge of creating something with the material, whether it be a pig or a lot of balls all lined up in a row, in a supportive environment allows for discovery as well as self-esteem building. Observing the young artist and loosely cataloging the creative process relative to the studio habits is helpful in understanding and promoting children’s development.

After School Studio, Monday, 10.31

Only a few children chose to paint today while others used red clay for the first time. One young artist was dissatisfied with one of his paintings, which included blue and yellow brush strokes, and wanted to start over. When asked what about the painting he didn’t like, he responded that he wanted the whole page to be blue and the yellow was getting in the way. I suggested he see what he could do with the parts he didn’t like, for instance turning them into something else. By first asking him what he disliked about the image, the child was able to focus on why he was becoming frustrated and hopefully practice problem solving skills other than just giving up on the image and starting a new one. He tried to expand the yellow marks but still expressed frustration with the piece and asked for another piece of paper to start over. I then asked him what his plan was for the new piece. He responded that he was trying to create an image of the ocean. When asked what about his current work didn’t look like the ocean he explained that he wanted to depict under the ocean and this was more the surface of the water. I prompted the young artist to think about what he could change or do differently to reach this result without getting frustrated. He thought for a little while and then responded that he would leave out the yellow and paint the entire paper blue, adding fish using a lighter blue to show that they were under the water. He created a new piece using shades blue and some purples and was very pleased, relaying a story about how it is a zoomed in view of the ocean floor containing a starfish and a monster climbing up the starfish. Although the young artist started over, he was able to problem solve and compete his desired effect rather than hurriedly moving through several pieces of paper.

10.19 Wednesday Drawing Studio

At the beginning of each class, young artists are asked to practice drawing their hand. In keeping with tradition, we began class by drawing their hand somewhere around their face as self portraits were the aim of tonight’s class, focusing on proportions of the face. A young artist who has drawn many faces in her sketch book, mostly of herself or a fellow student, drew herself resting her chin on her hand. 

At her age, children are just beginning to want their drawings to closely resemble the subjects and are focused on accurate representation. After the opening exercise, the proportions of the face were explained to the group and young artists were encouraged to measure the placement of the facial features. Along with this physical and visual measurement, the fact that facial features are commonly misplaced when drawing was pointed out. After the demonstration, artists made another attempt at self portraiture. 

This time the young artists used lines to accurately place eyes, nose and mouth as shown in the example. She exclaimed, “Wow look at the difference! This is so much better!” When asked to compare the two faces she did not wish to share her first. Although it seems she was embarrassed about her first portrait, her actions and verbalizations made it clear that she knew she had improved. It is important to help young artists understand this process of improvement and encourage reflection on past work.

Wednesday Art in the Afternoon 9.21.11

Today in art in the afternoon we started by drawing mandalas with oil pastels. We used this time and the drawings to introduce ourselves. As the children drew they began to notice the effects of blending different colors with the result of obtaining an entirely new color.

One student asked about and commented on the diagram that explains black as the strongest color and white as the weakest. We then discussed the reasons for the importance of mixing the stronger into the weaker as the effects are more noticeable. Because the class showed such strong interest in color mixing, Kathryn decided to supply them with tempera paint in ice cube trays, each with two white, two yellow, one blue, one red, and allow them to explore mixing color for themselves.

She demonstrated mixing the stronger color into the weaker with popsicle sticks and/or small spoons. Allowing them to mix first without supplying the paper helps to keep the mixing in the trays and not as much on the paper. The class came up with a vast array of colors and were asked to name each of them. These were then documented on a large sheet of paper with the newly created color’s name as well as the creator’s name listed below the color. One girl created a gray color and named it “Dolphin” and then proceeded to paint a dolphin as her painting. Another created a variety of colors, strawberry icing cake being one, and covered her entire paper with all of them.

Another girl painted an alien swimming in water and had an elaborate story to tell when asked about her painting. After everyone finished painting, we hung them on the wall and the children moved into the building area. The boys created a train and one girl experimented with colored and wooden blocks on the light table.

Big Chalk Draw!!