Tamsin Ainslie
As the after school art classes were coming to an end, I asked the Preteen class what they would like to do in the last few classes. I find when I give something that open ended, it causes the kids to draw a bland so I then showed them a couple of artist I was admiring of recent and they all fell in love!! with these cute little pencil paintings.
We discussed the different elements of the paintings and then they went through my enormous pencil box and found some of the more "well loved" pencils and took them down to stubs with a pencil sharpener.
I happened to have some very small canvases on hand, so they created their very own little pencil paintings. I did give them the option of using any of the art supplies available for their paintings, like a watercolor tube, but each and every one of them wanted to make a pencil.
They were thrilled with their results.
I put them on little easels at the end for them to display at home which was a very big hit.
The preteen class had so much fun that I decided to do a similar project with the Elementary class. This time I let them pick whatever subject matter they wanted for their acrylic painting.
"Mr. Fox" 6 year old
One young boy wanted to paint a fox. He had a lovely sketch on the canvas and the next time I walked by, the fox was wearing a very distinguished jacket. I was totally smitten and wonder what wonderful story could be created around this sweet little painting.
Dancing Bear, 6 year old
This is a new student who I found out after she created this artwork is quite shy to draw. I'm not sure why when you look at all the personality she created in this wonderful work!
7 year old
This beautiful bird was also created. I love to watch the focus this artist puts into his pieces. He always creates work that takes my breath away. And while there was a lot of interest in painting birds, there was a loud request for me to have the studio bird, Parakeet the Parapete, in for modeling.
I can't tell you how happy I am that I listened to the kids.
Parapete the Parakeet, 9 year old
Within the week, Parapete escaped in the most bizarre of circumstances. We searched endlessly for him for a week and have been absolutely devastated by his disappearance.
Parapete, 7 year old
We have finally had to come to terms with saying goodbye to this sweet little bird. Our family will miss his catcall whistles as we came down each morning, it was so good for the ego. Not quite as big as his ego as he constantly let us know what a pretty bird, a very pretty bird, a pretty, pretty, pretty bird he was as he finally capped his litany of pretties with a Parapete is a pretty bird.
I will truly cherish all the pictures in my records of the artworks he inspired in the children over the past year and I know not only our family but the studio artist will miss this little guy.
Love you Parapete.
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