Monthly Archives: December 2010

Color Me In

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(Inspired by this post at TinkerLab.)

Materials: Roll of paper wide enough to fit a kid on (I got ours at Staples); Sharpie for tracing; crayons, colored pencils, paint, or whatever for adding color

A few weeks ago, while the boys were at school, I traced G’s outline on a piece of paper. She really loved getting traced. She wasn’t too interested in coloring herself in–she added a few crayon marks outside the border–but we hung her outline up on the wall in the hallway and when we pass it she says, “Me!” and often spreads her arms out, like she did when I traced her.

When my six-year-old saw that, he wanted to know when I could trace him.

I think there is something inherently exciting about seeing a life-sized you. I suggested that he could color himself in the way he looked, or he could show all the colors he is on the inside. He chose to do the second, which he understood right away. (If this is something you want to try, you could read a book such as Dr. Seuss’s My Many-Colored Days first.) We hung his outline up on the wall, brought the step stool over, and he went to work with his colored pencils.

Although my nine-year-old hadn’t wanted to come down to the studio, at this point he wandered in, looked extremely interested, and asked if I could trace him, too. He’s much taller, so I had to cut him off below the waist, because I didn’t think I’d be able to hang his full outline on the wall very easily.

He decided to use paint and to represent himself as he looks, right down to the clothes he was wearing that day.

The finished pieces:

My boys usually approach projects in completely different ways. One is more wildly imaginative, the other more literal, but it’s a mistake to think that a more literal, precise child can’t also be creative. My first degree was in science, the second in English, and one of the reasons I loved my photography classes is because they brought my detail-oriented and creative sides together in one discipline. (This was back when the work took place in a darkroom; no clicking “undo” if you messed up the ratios of chemicals due to carelessness.)

As I watch my older son, I am reminded by how much a creative pursuit can be enhanced by having a plan. As I watch my younger son, I am excited by his exuberance and ability to jump right in. Both qualities are important, and I try to meet them both where they are. I’ve seen evidence of my six-year-old stopping to think before beginning his work, and my nine-year-old relaxing a bit into an unknown experience that he can’t necessarily predict. It sounds treacly, but I’m privileged to be able to observe and learn from them both, as well as be the one who helps guide them.

Artist Notebooks

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An artist needs a notebook, right? A place to record ideas and inspirations, or a place to doodle. I have notebooks everywhere, but mine are usually full of lists: items I want to knit or sew; the week’s meal plan and grocery list; the measurements of my kids’ feet (I’m in the process of making them all socks). I thought my young artists and I needed some new notebooks, because notebooks are fun, and maybe I could put something more interesting in mine than the grocery list.

Materials: Notebooks with blank covers (I made ours using the tutorial here), your imagination, and whatever means you desire to decorate the cover (we used paper, glue, painter’s tape, and colored pencils)

I went and bought a corner punch for the covers of our notebooks, and that one little detail–rounded corners–fills me with an unreasonable amount of pleasure. So if you, too, find pleasure in the details, a corner punch is totally worth it.

My original idea had been to use our painted tissue paper to collage the covers, but my boys both said they didn’t want to tear or cut their tissue paper. I offered my tissue paper to my daughter, but quickly realized she’s not quite ready to glue little pieces of paper onto another piece of paper successfully, and I didn’t want her to get frustrated. I asked her if she wanted to decorate her cover with tape. Oh yes, she most certainly did.

Meanwhile, my six-year-old had punched lots and lots of colored circles out of some origami-type paper for another project, and we were left with all the scraps. The boys and I agreed that this paper would be great to collage with.

My notebook:

Perhaps it will go the other way. I haven’t decided yet.

My nine-year-old needed the hole punch back because he wanted to fill in some of the empty space with contrasting circles.

His finished cover:

He added some text:

My six-year old noticed that if you don’t put the paper all the way into the hole punch, you could get crescent-moon shapes. When he was done cutting and pasting, he added a drawing with colored pencils.

An artist’s notebook is a happy thing.

Sponge Painting

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My boys are still in school (today is the last day before break! I’m so excited they’ll be home!), so it was just my daughter and myself in the studio today.

Materials: Paper, sponge, and paint. Couldn’t be easier! We used black paper and white paint, because the black paper is so visually interesting. If my daughter had asked for more colors, I would have gotten them out, but she was perfectly content with just the white. We started with a round sponge from a set of clay tools.

Here she is, checking it out. I didn’t think she’d use the sponge to make prints, but more as a sort of paintbrush, which is what she did.

For a bit she puddled all the paint in one spot, and then she added some up above. “Rainbow,” she declared.

In general, she doesn’t like the paint on her hands and she’ll ask us to wet wipe it off right away. This time, when she showed me the paint on her finger, with a distressed look on her face, I asked if she wanted to see if she could get paint onto the paper using her fingers. She tried that. I wondered if she might then just dive in and finger paint, but she kept to the sponge. However, she didn’t seem to get upset over painty fingers for the rest of the time.

I found a steel scraper in the set of pottery tools. It’s very very thin, and I thought it might be neat to use with the paint. She dabbed some paint onto the paper with it.

At some point she told me to paint, so I got myself a piece of paper and another sponge, part of a regular kitchen sponge. (I don’t draw or paint on children’s artwork, even when invited. I tell them, This is yours, and I don’t want to mark it up, so I’ll do my own.) She then had us trade sponges periodically.

She noticed how the piece of kitchen sponge had holes in it, unlike the other one, and how those holes filled with paint. “A LOT!” she said, and then ordered me to use it to put a lot of paint on my paper, too. That sponge was good for getting a lot of paint on the paper at once. She noticed how she could make big, wide strokes with her sponges, and little marks, too.

Once we were both painting, we gave each other ideas. She had me making big wide swaths and then watched while I made polka dots with the edge of the sponge. Then she tried that, too. In the end, she covered almost all the paper, which is a change from her recent paintings, which tend to use just a small portion of the paper as she layers the paint. Can you see the vertical stroke marks about two thirds of the way across? The last thing she did was to pick up the steel scraper and make those marks in the paint.

And then she said, “All done.” We washed hands, rinsed the plate and sponges, and went upstairs.

***

Happy Holidays! I’m looking forward to having time to spend with all my kids. I hope your holidays are equally joyful!

Holly Jolly*

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Our studio table is currently a bit full of holiday-related projects, a bit more on the craft side of things.

I’ve got a wooden snowman ornament I picked up on a whim, to paint for my two-year-old, who seems to have a thing for snowmen. Those green squares in the middle are from a handknit sock that I didn’t feel like darning, so I felted it and cut squares out of it, thinking we might make a wreath decorations like this one, if I get around to it. In the back you can just barely see some bottle cap magnets in progress, and let’s get a closer look at the glass baubles.

These are painted ornaments, destined to be teacher gifts, if the paint ever dries (I’m a little worried about that!). The boys chose the paint combinations for their teachers, truly thinking about what colors they might like. (“I always see Miss ___ wearing light blue, so I’ll use that color in hers.”) So while we’ve been busy in the studio, it’s more elf-work than anything else, although I’ll file this post under color for those glorious color combinations.

*My two-year-old has a curious and strong attachment to “Holly Jolly Christmas,” resulting in that song being on repeat for hours at a time. I’ve no doubt this Christmas will be remembered as our holliest and jolliest!

Are you up to any elf-work lately?

Tissue Paper Painting

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We’ve had some challenges getting into the studio lately (husband travel, stomach bugs), but we finally managed to try something I’ve been looking forward to: painting tissue paper using Eric Carle’s method. (That link will take you to a slide show from his web site.)

Materials: Tissue paper (I used white tissue paper I bought at Target, and cut it in half so it was easier to work with), watered-down tempera paints, newsprint for protecting the table and for the papers to dry on, brushes and other objects for applying paint. I watered down the tempera quite a bit. Tissue paper is very, very thin, and it can’t take much paint before tearing.

Before beginning, we looked at some of our Eric Carle books, and I explained to the boys how the papers would dry in between, to keep the various colors from mixing.

My two-year-old also painted tissue paper, but she insisted on layering all the paint in one spot.

This served as a cautionary example for the boys, because of course, her paper ripped. (But it’s process! Not product!)

We started with a layer of one color, and then let it dry while we had lunch. I’d planned on doing this spaced out over one day–there really is a lot of waiting in between while the paints dry–but the second layer took longer than expected to dry so we stretched it out over an extra day. Here, my nine-year-old is adding a second layer to one of his sheets.

Here are some sheets drying after the first two layers.

My nine-year-old wanted to add small dots to one of his sheets, so I suggested a pencil eraser. It worked out just as he’d envisioned.

Here, my six-year-old is applying his third layer with a sponge. Because the sponge was larger than the paint container, he painted the sponge with a paintbrush, then applied the sponge to the paper.

He also used a sponge for his second sheet (each boy did two to start with, as we were limited by drying space).

On the left below is my nine-year-old’s second sheet, with the third layer applied with a smaller sponge. On the right is my sheet (I only did one). I used the edge of a sponge to apply my third layer.

This was really fun, although it made me wish we had nice large drying shelves so we weren’t limited to what would fit on the washer and dryer to dry. The possibilities are just so endless! I talked with the boys at the start how we could use these as collage papers, and it seemed they both had some ideas in mind at the start–they both talked about trying for a water effect with their blue sheets. By the end, though, my six-year-old was wondering aloud whether he really wanted to tear his sheets up. I have a plan in mind for mine, as well. Hopefully we will have an easier time getting back into the studio sooner rather than later–as with most things, it seems I have more ideas than time!

Open-Environment Play

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(If my goal is to support my children’s creativity–and that is most definitely my goal–then this takes place not just in the art studio but in all we do. So occasionally I’ll post some other examples of creativity. These will be labeled kids out of the studio.)

A discussion over at Kidoinfo led me to this article, where I learned that a better-sounding term for what I’ve always called “stupid plastic toys” is closed-environment toys. Those are the toys that are supposed to be played with in a particular way. Conversely, “open-environment” toys would be the ones that allow the kids to make the decisions and direct the play. I don’t like the closed-environment toys, and I try not to let them sneak into the house. When they do, I try to sneak them back out again.

There are compromises, to be sure. We have one of those battery-operated hand-held Simon Says games referenced in the article; we bought it a few days before driving to Canada for vacation, and it lives in the glove compartment of the car, along with the travel bingo set and the travel tangrams. We are venturing into the world of Nintendo DS, ever so cautiously, with our oldest. But above all other toys, I love the open-environment playthings and the many, infinite ways they can be transformed in the hands of a child.

Home sick from school earlier this week, my six-year-old brought out the play silks and the tree blocks. Working with his younger sister, he set the scene and populated it with the bunny family and the gnome family (the latter made from wooden peg people wearing the little sweaters and gnome hats I knit them).

He built the bunnies and gnomes a house.

He brought out the pattern blocks and built them some furniture. Here is a close-up of the kitchen, with the Mama Bunny cooking at the stove.

The brother and sister bunny went out to play on the bridge.

After these pictures were taken, he used more pattern blocks to add flowers to the field and lily pads to the water. I’m not sure how long he worked on this–at least an hour, probably close to two. It wasn’t my idea, it wasn’t my suggestion, and I stayed out of it completely except when he came to show me his creations. The materials were all on the shelves, and this particular morning, they were his medium. While the kids have built homes for the gnomes with the tree blocks before, this is the first time he’s created such an encompassing environment and the first time he’s built furniture.

It stayed up all day (quite an accomplishment, considering there’s a toddler in the house), and he was okay with cleaning it up before dinner, because he can look at the pictures any time he wants. And I couldn’t resist documenting his creativity.

What are some of your favorite “open-environment” playthings?

The Kids Are in Charge

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One of the many reasons I love finally having a dedicated studio space is because when my two-year-old comes to me and says, “Paint!” it is easy enough to meet her request right away. And since his sister brought up the idea, my six-year-old (home again from school today) also wanted to paint. Because my daughter has seen me set up her easel often enough by now, as I set up the paper (she can’t reach the roll), she began taking the covers off the paint jars.

When she was done, she pointed out the swirl to me, making the motion for me with her arm. This swirling is new to her in paint, and she was pleased. She showed me what brush and color she used for each part of the painting.

Meanwhile, my son asked for red, blue, and yellow. We have lots of other colors of tempera paint, but that’s all he wanted. And from that, he made this.

He began with the green stem and then started trying to mix more colors on the paper. I suggested he mix on the plate and gave him a jar of clear water for rinsing. (He began with a brush for each color, but he ended up with far more colors than brushes!) My role here is not to launch into an explanation of secondary colors, something he already knows about anyway; my role is to quietly provide what he needs to accomplish his goals.

As he worked, he commented on the colors he was creating.

“I really like yellow mixed with green; it makes almost an army green color.”

“This is where I mixed all the colors together. It’s brown.”

“Look at this color purple!”

And I love how he filled every inch of that paper with color.

When my daughter saw her brother working at the table, she decided she wanted to get up there too. I gave her a big piece of paper and asked what she’d like to draw with, and she decided upon colored pencils. When she saw me using the scissors, she asked for those, and once she had cut a bit into her drawing, she asked for tape.

I’m really interested in how she’s using the tape, and I plan to make some more options available to her (like this, and thanks to Rachelle for the link!).

I really enjoy watching my children explore, and helping them on their way.

Classic Childhood Play

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My six-year-old is home from school today on what I call a “buffer” day–getting over being sick, but not lie-on-the-couch sick. So I decided to make some homemade play dough. But because I have celiac, our homemade play dough is gluten free. I used this recipe, but all the ones I found looked the same. I made two batches, using the beautiful natural food colorings from Dancing Deer. (Mine are several years old, and I don’t see them on their site anymore. That’s a shame.)

Warm play dough feels so lovely in your hands on a chilly morning, and this batch was smooth and silky.

I rummaged around in my odds and ends and found some tools for the kids to use–craft sticks, corks, tooth picks, and some table forks. My son created a dragon.

He then created a story, something he does nearly effortlessly. He has always narrated his play (his life, really) out loud. He used the corks as buildings, and covered them with the golden dough, which was fire, and as his hands worked, he told his ongoing story. This was a creative use of the play dough that I wouldn’t have predicted (although I should have, with him, as anything and everything becomes a prop–his imagination floors me). My caution with play dough is that it can become such a two-dimensional medium, with rolling out and cookie cutters and so on. But I haven’t replaced our gluteny dough toys, so he invented new ways to use the dough.

My daughter, when she was done smushing and exploring, created a sculpture with her tools.

Mamas get to play, too.

(That’s supposed to be a snowman next to a tree with a star on top.)

I’m so glad to have a gluten-free play dough option. The kids like to watch the dough come together–there’s something a little bit nicer about making it yourself, rather than popping open a plastic tub (plus, it smells much better!). And then to get to squish it around while it’s still warm, not to mention choose the colors you want… definitely a good use of a morning home from school!

Basics: Our Studio

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Don’t you love getting a peek into other folks’ creative spaces? I do. There are so many ways to solve the problem of how to create an art space in your home. We’ve only had a dedicated art/craft area for about a year. Before that, I made do, sometimes more successfully than others. When my boys were small, I didn’t provide as many creative opportunities as I’d have liked, simply because the logistics got me down. (They’re 2 1/2 years apart; many of those early days, the logistics of keeping them both fed, clothed, and clean got me down.)

Because we have a galley kitchen, our dining room table is also where we eat, which meant art projects needed to be cleaned up within a set amount of time. For a while I had a small table and an easel in our spare room/office, and the carpet tells the tale of many creative encounters with paint and play dough. When the room got too crowded for an easel, I bought a roll of cork and nailed it into the wall and pinned paper onto it. The year we homeschooled, I carved out an area in our unfinished basement and set up a table; I simply had to bring jugs and bins of water downstairs whenever we did wet-on-wet watercolor painting, which wouldn’t have been so difficult if I hadn’t been very pregnant (and then slinging a newborn).

This is all to say that the perfect studio space is probably never going to be achieved in the typical family home, but we do the best we can with what we have on hand (and we don’t feel guilty when we see other people’s wonderful-looking studios!). It’s also to say, when we decided last year it was finally time to finish the basement, which had been the plan from the time we bought the house, I made sure we got an art/craft area down there, and a utility sink. The contractor seemed a bit confused at first–he assumed the middle area would be some sort of common room, right? Couch, TV, video console type of thing? Um, no.

From the bottom up: I chose a vinyl flooring, because who cares if something spills on it? Let it get messy. The walls are bright because of the one major flaw in this space (remember, nothing is going to be perfect)–it has no natural lighting. I have four ceiling lights, and I have daylight bulbs in all of them. This is good enough to fool my camera into thinking it’s outside, and I think it’s the best we can do in a basement. (Other rooms in the basement have windows, but this area does not.)

In the bottom left you can see the easel. Behind where I’m standing is the laundry area, with my beloved utility sink and a shelf that holds drying paintbrushes along with laundry detergent. I strung some line in there with some mini-clothespins. Some days bathing suits are drying there; other days, art projects. Behind the easel, near the table, is our Learning Tower. I coveted one of these from the time I first had a toddler, and we finally bought one last year. Since our table is counter height, this is perfect for her to join us at the art table.

Speaking of our table, it’s not only tall, it’s huge.

We (meaning mostly my husband) made it ourselves. I searched online and came across a table that looked much like this and cost a fortune. I said, Hey, can we make this? And he said, Sure. The ends are the nine-cubby shelf systems you can find in Home Depot or Lowe’s. We got two of those and a huge sheet of melamine for the top and put it all together. The top is about 72″ long and 40″ wide and everything wipes off melamine. You can buy stuff at the hardware store to seal the rough edges so they don’t cut anyone or snag on anything. If we ever move, we’ll have to take the whole thing apart.

But look at all the storage I get with this! This is where I store just about all of our art supplies–paints of all kinds, markers, paper, crayons, paint brushes, collage materials, odds and ends that might be useful, anything at all I’ve collected over the years, it’s here. I also keep my sewing and knitting books in these shelves. Yes, all of this is accessible to my toddler and it has been for the past year. (The scissors are kept on the table itself, so she has to ask for those.) Yes, she’s gone on some shelf-emptying sprees, but mostly minor, and she’s learned to respect the materials and ask for what she’d like to use, for the most part.

(You can also see what we sit on while we create–stools, because the table is higher than normal. And I love the black and white floor with the black stools and white table. Just do.)

On the far wall, did you see the ledge? That comes with the basement. It’s so useful.

The permanent markers are up there, as I haven’t introduced them to my toddler yet. The boys can reach them themselves, though.

Under the table is, well, a mess.

Yikes! This is where I keep my bins of yarn and bags of fabric, the painting boards, and any pads that are too big to fit in the cubbies. On the right you can see we have a narrow shelf right under the table surface, which is under quite a bit of duress right now. Originally I planned to keep my cutting mat and large metal rulers there, but I’ve added some watercolor pads, too. You can also see some loose felt under the table, left over from a recent sewing project (troll hats!). I haven’t found a place for it yet, since I seem to have acquired an awful lot of felt, too.

So that’s our studio. It’s not perfect, but I love it, and right after we finally finished the basement I dreamed that we had to move and in my dream, I was most upset at leaving the art/craft area behind. If you have a post that features your creative space, I’d love if you left a link to it!