Weekly art classes are back up and running again after the holiday break! As much as I enjoy the holidays, I'm quite happy to be getting back into my regular schedule.
I have a group of three-year-olds on Monday mornings this month. I love working with this age group, as absolutely everything is new and exciting for them.
I decided to start off the month focusing on their favorite stuffed companions.
One of the three-year-olds drops her older brother off to class and always has her "bunny-bun" with her. To my surprise one evening when I asked how Bunny-bun was doing, I got an actual answer from Bunny-bun. And as if a three year old's voice is not high and sweet enough, Bunny-bun talks in an even higher voice that literally makes your heart melt. In that moment, I realized the magical relationship between a three-year-old and their favorite stuffed animal and a project was born.
I asked the moms to help me out by sending a simple photograph of their child's beloved. Here is Bunny-bun, taken by the three-year-old no less!
I printed these out on my home printer and taped them down to the art table. Then I taped a piece of acetate over top of the reference picture. When the kids arrived, we first played "shape detectives" and found all the shapes that made up their companions and drew them on the acetate with water-based makers.
Why water-based? So they could erase any shapes that they wanted to try again. Once they were happy, I had them connect the shapes with a permanent black marker on the acetate, creating a line drawing of their stuffie.
We then took off the acetate and voila! they had a drawing of their stuffed animal. We placed the acetates on the table and I quickly placed a piece of silk on top and taped it down. Each child then traced their drawing onto the silk with a washable pencil, which I added resist to after class and they will use for silk painting next week. Here those are drying.
I think all of this actually took me longer to type and you to read than it did for the children to do! Because after all, they are three! And things can move quite quickly when you are three.
So now they had a great sense of how to draw their stuffed animals and it was time to put the acetates away. I had already set up some pastel paper on another table and gave each child a black oil pastel and asked them to draw their stuffed animal with it.
Then I gave each of them a box of chalk pastel to create their portraits.
As you can see they are different from the acetate drawings they used for their silks, but the kids also retained a good sense of how to draw their animals.
Jemima Puddle-duck, 3 year old
Elsa, the bunny. 3 year old
Lots of experimentation with the chalks was happening, smearing was fun, a lot of fun. I asked them to put a different color on top of their first colors to see what happened also. I asked them to color with the white chalk on top and asked what they discovered too. And when they and their papers were quite colorful, I gave them the black oil pastels one last time to go over their black lines again.
rainbow bunny, 3 year old
Bunny-bun, 3 year old
This age group finds great joy in the process and it is fun to watch them. They were all quite proud of themselves in the end. This is a 45 minute class and we still had about 5 or so minutes to fill once everyone was cleaned up until parents arrived for pick up. To fill that time, I brought out some large newsprint and gave each child a very fat water-soluble graphite pencil.
I think these are the most favorite things in the studio for all age groups and they did not disappoint these young children either.
I asked them to show me what "happy" and "angry" lines looked like on paper. Then I gave each girl a paintbrush and a jug of water and asked them to see what happened when they added water to their lines.
That was a hit! So then they created dancing lines, sad lines, well you get the idea, and then added water on top. Where the water dripped on the paper, they traced the shapes created with the pencils. This held their attention long enough for me to quickly step outside the door of the studio to spray their chalk pastels in order to set them.
Then moms arrived and goodbyes were said. I'm feeling pretty confident when I say they all had fun, one little girl was quite excited to tell her mom that she blended the colors with her fingers. HER FINGERS! She was quite fascinated with this discovery and it was sweet to listen to her share this newfound knowledge with mom.
I can't wait to watch them discover the magic of dye painting on silk next week with those sweet sketches they made now. Monday morning can't come soon enough.
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