Miro inspired watercolors

One of the artist I showed the children in the "Studying Under the Masters" class was Joan Miro. I have always enjoyed his work but fell in love last fall while visiting his museum in Barcelona. I have been wanting to do a project inspired by him ever since in the studio.

Along with this automatic drawing exercise inspired by his work, the kids also worked on a paper sculpture which I unfortunately did not get pictures of to share.

When I was the age of the kids, I use to love drawing this way. Whenever I was bored or had a new box of 64 crayons and needed to use every color, I would create a scribble and begin to color in the shapes until I found the creature hidden within.

11 year old

anteater, 8 year old

This project was done with permanent marker and liquid watercolor. The kids first created a "scribble". I did stress to keep it loose and the loops large so their shapes in the end did not become to small and overwhelming to color.

8 year old

fish and duck, 10 year old

Once they had created a scribble, they began to randomly fill in shapes with color. I suggested they make sure the same color never butted up next to each other in the beginning and that they continue to turn their paper around after they filled in a color until they began to see something hidden within the picture to share.

"tasha", 7 year old

For some kids, the vision on the paper came quickly and for others it took some time.

Once they had created something, I handed out the permanent black markers one more time so they could thicken lines they wanted to highlight or add features to their animals to bring them to life.

7 year old

I was quite impressed with the imaginative creatures brought forth by the kids and hope they had as much fun trying their hand at automatic drawing as I did all those years ago.

joan miro inspired imaginary animals

What's an imaginary land without animals? 

I decided to have the students in the Fanciful Frolic art camp through North Vancouver Community Arts Council create an imaginary animal inspired by the automatic drawing style of Joan Miro. As a child, I loved to create art like this, especially when I was given a new 64 box of Crayola crayons with the built in sharpener, because I could try out every color in the box!

I had no idea who Joan Miro was at that time or even that I was experimenting with automatic drawing, I just knew it was a lot of fun to make a scribble line drawing to color in until I found an interesting creature inside.

I didn't have a new box of 64 crayons to give each child at the camp, but I did have watercolor paper, a sharpie pen, and some primary colors of liquid watercolor!

I asked each child to create an overlapping continuous line, without getting too small and "scribbly". 

Then I asked them to begin filling in the shapes with different colors, not putting the same color next to each other on the paper. I stressed they did not have to color in all the shapes and that they should move the paper around as they painted until they began to find an animal hidden inside.

Lots of fun and lots of interesting animals began to introduce themselves on the paper, discovered from within these children's vivid imaginations.

However for me, the best part is the spelling in the titles. I love this stage of childhood and how they put letters together to create words. When possible I strongly encourage them to "sound out' the words, although for some kids, they insist I tell them how to spell it correctly....which I honor too.

Regardless, I find the final work charming.

6 year old

7 year old 

you are going to have to use your French when sounding out this one

6 year old

7 year old

6 year old

8 year old

8 year old

6 year old