preschool acrylic paintings

I had so much fun in May running two preschool classes.

Working with this age group is so rewarding as everything is exciting and their enthusiasm is contagious.

With the Wednesday group, I had each child bring in a favorite toy. This was inspired by one little boy in the class who brought a wooden pull toy each week that was his "dog". I truly thought he would paint that dog, but surprised me by bringing a corduroy stuffed elephant instead named Ellie.

This little boy had a wonderful time mixing colors in his background but what really excited him was adding the corduroy lines. He first ran the back of his brush through the thick wet paint and then once dry used the black oil pastel to highlight it again.

4 year old

I placed all the toys in the center of the table so they could "model" for the young artist.

I handed the children woody pencils and asked them to sketch the shapes of their toys.

Once they had all their sketches finished, I traded their pencils for black oil pastels. I made sure they knew that they only had to trace over the lines they were happy with and could ignore anything they didn't want as the paint would cover it up.

Why do I have them use oil pastel? Well when they start layering on the paint, the pastel seems to hold up against it so they don't completely lose all their sketching work and can still see their original idea.

I always use painting projects as an opportunity to explore mixing colors with this age group and they LOVE mixing colors!

4 year old

Just look at the rainbow spotlight behind Sophia the doll! And that hair, be still my heart. Each and every new color she mixed was excitedly announced to me, "Jeri! Jeri! Look what I made!" It was so stinkin' cute.

4 year old

I had them paint the background first that way if they went over their subject drawings, and they did, they would be able to paint over top the background so the subject was the star. This is not Bunny Buns first appearance in this young artists' work and I believe it is her most beloved companion. One time it use to be pink but as she stated numerous times while mixing her colors to paint, she is now grey and you can see this young girl reference that fact in the very thoughtful color choices she made in the painting.

Are these not the most precious keepsakes of toys that have a special place in their young lives?!

The Monday preschool class created flower paintings again with a focus on observing and exploring mixing colors.

I had some yellow gerber daisies left over from the preteen flower project and put one flower in a vase in front of each young artist.

Using the same steps as above, I had them first really look at the flowers and observe the shapes and details.

4 year old

You can see the details of their observations in their artwork too. The round circles in the center of the flower and the smaller petals surrounding the larger ones.

4 year old

I spoke to them about "artist choice" and told them that although the flower was  yellow by no means did they need to paint a yellow flower. They could choose their favorite color they wanted and guess what? Every four year old chose pink! Who knew?

They also had the choice of whatever color they wanted for their background but once the first little girl announced she wanted turquoise, they all wanted turquoise. These colors were all mixed directly on their papers using the primary colors. I truly love the movement of their brushstrokes and the variety of beautiful colors they created.

4 year old

When finished they had the opportunity to go over their black oil pastel lines and for fun I handed them white china pencils to play with and explore. You can see they all had fun using them in the center of their flowers.

I think people underestimate the capabilities of this age group. They are quite excited to try observational drawing and trying some of the "big kid" techniques.  I find by offering open ended projects, that allow them to interpret what they are observing however they want along with the opportunity to create their own unique colors by mixing primary paints together still offers up lots of process based learning. 

As I tell the parents, the objective is never product but I'm continually amazed that when left to do what they want while at the same time giving them the choice of using some "artist tip secrets" as they are called in the studio, they come up with some amazing works of art that only young children seem to be able to capture.

letting preschoolers paint big

This May I have had two preschool classes running in the mornings and one of the first projects I introduced was watercolor. I use liquid watercolor with this age group as I find it is far more inviting- easy for them to use and vibrant color.

I always present them with just the primary colors so they can explore mixing them together and observing the new colors they make when blended. I also make sure there is salt, paper towels, and water on hand to manipulate the watercolors by diluting, blotting, and absorbing the color.

I also decided to give the children paper almost the same size as them! It is not often very young children get the opportunity to draw very large and it is a great way to help develop their motor skills.

For the Monday class, we created self portraits. Do I really believe they will retain any of the information regarding the rules of the face? Absolutely not.

However I also believe that young children are quite capable and enjoy adults recognizing their ability to grasp big concepts. What I do love about introducing the rules of the face is that it is an invitation for the children to really study themselves in a mirror and an opportunity to build up a positive self image about themselves.

What do you notice about your eyes?

You have such lovely almond shape eyes.

Look at the beautiful blue of your eyes.

It is always a joy to watch them literally bloom under the compliments as they see the features that are unique to only them and take pride in those differences.

Each child first created a drawing with a permanent black marker. There were several additions each young artist decided to make when creating their drawings such as tongues sticking out and crowns. 

It was quite cute how excited they all got when they realized there were not steadfast rules as to what they could and couldn't do on their papers. Each time they would ask if they could add a bow, a crown, or whatever else, I would simply respond, "You're the artist. Do what pleases you."

I got a huge kick out of the above artwork with the tongue sticking out. She giggled as she added the tongue to her portrait but somewhere along the way the self portrait became a portrait of her grandmother. I asked her if her grandmother stuck her tongue out a lot and was assured that in fact, she did not. 

Once they were happy with their portrait drawings, they began to play with the primary watercolors and created the most incredible palettes. They had fun exploring what happened when they "bathed" their paper first, added salt, put lots of bright color on but then blotted it away with a paper towel. 

In the end, their self portraits are charming. If only as adults we could paint with such abandon and create such whimsy.

Since the other group of preschoolers had done self portraits in the past, I put a vase with a large yellow daisy in front of each child.

Using the same steps as the self portraits, I asked the children to notice what they saw in the middle of the flower. Then the shape of the petals and how many petals they saw. 

Again my expectation is not that they create a replica of the flower or even that what they observe ends up being recorded on the paper, but respecting their ability in not only observing their visual world but their capability of recording it on paper in their own unique way.

And unique way they did!

There was one yellow flower in front of them and after several questions of "can I add more flowers?" and me responding "you're the artist, whatever you decide" this is what was finished in the class.

Again I gave the children primary colors so they could explore and observe how they blended and what new colors emerged. This is always so much fun to watch because there is still such surprise as yellow and blue merge to create green. And each new discovery is shared excitedly with me as if it's Christmas morning. 

Really there is no better job in the world in these moments.

This little one spent the entire class just putting one color at the top of a petal and another at the bottom, then adding plain water in the middle to coax the colors to come together on a "play date" and watching what happened. 

And this sweet child, who asked for black paint from the moment we started. If you look carefully you can see some very small petals, which I love as they were created from her original observations of the flower on the table. Surrounding the middle was a fringe of small petals and I love that she added them to her final drawing. 

As they finished their colorful flowers, I brought out the black paint as promised. 

One mixed the black with color to see what happened but the little girl who wanted black from moment one added it with pure abandon to her background, from time to time adding a little salt or water. She talked happily as she added the black and was beyond thrilled with her results.

As you can see, each child left the studio with a painting almost the same size as themselves and although each and every one of them was adorable, they were in no way near as adorable as the children who created them.

favorite things mixed media

I was sad to see the 4/5 year old class end.

These two kiddos are so fun to work with and charm the pants off of me each week.

For the last project, I decided to create a mixed media work that I could build upon to keep them engaged for the hour class.

We started with a blind contour drawing of their very favorite animal.

Then I let them each take a fat water-soluble graphite and spend time adding any details they wanted to their drawing to make their animals really come to life.

Once they had finished I gave them a paint brush and a bowl of water and asked them to do over their drawings and tell me what happened.

Were they ever surprised to see the pencil marks start to become grey paint.

When they were tired of that, I asked each of them to tell me their favorite color and gave them a bit of liquid watercolor to paint the backgrounds of their pictures.

For fun I had them try blooming and allowed them to add salt then let them watch what happened. I'm not sure what they enjoyed more, flicking water on the painting or adding the salt.

I then quickly dried their works with a blowdryer and handed them a fountain pen and black ink. They truly enjoyed using the pens, just like every. other. child. who has ever played with them.

Then I put out some chalk and oil pastel for them to put any final touches on their mixed media project of their favorite things.

At the end of class, one child had created a picture of her favorite animal, a horse, using her favorite color, blue.

No surprise there as every lesson she wants to draw a horse and asks for blue paint.

4 year old, "Oceania, the horse" mixed media

I also wasn't surprised to learn the other child wanted to focus on a fox for their favorite animal. The fox has been showing up quite a bit lately in his artwork.

5 year old, "Foxy Phillipe" mixed media

For fun I had them title their artworks at the end of class. And once again, the pants were charmed right off of me.

Hope these two have a wonderful summer holiday.

Preschool acrylic sheep portraits

This past week, the 3 year old class created acrylic paintings of sheep.

We started by observing some photo reference of sheep and discovering the shapes.

Using soluble graphite, the children drew each shape they discovered onto their acrylic paper.

I emphasized drawing big, trying to touch the sides of their paper with the shapes.

What shape is the head?

What shape is the nose?

What shape are the ears? And where are they on the head?

And how do we make sure our sheep can breathe? What shape is that?

When they had their shapes on the paper, I traded the graphite for paint brushes and some paint.

In just the primary colors, that's right, all the color you see on these artworks were created by the 3 year olds.

Are you impressed? I know I am!

Starting with the background, I let them experiment with mixing blue with white and red on top and blue, yellow and white on the bottom.

To keep things interesting, I gave them some cardboard I had cut into rectangles to scrap through the paint on the paper- further mixing the colors.

All the while asking them to telling me what they discovered happening to the color, which was very, very exciting.

When the backgrounds were covered, I put a lot of white on their palettes and told them to begin painting their sheep. They did not wash their brushes, only wiped them, in order to give some interesting shades of color in the white.

What was so great about having the kids start with the graphite was when it mixed with the paint. it automatically began giving their artwork some interesting values. And in the case above, a mouth! How amazing is that mouth for a three year old drawing?!

As all the white paint was filling the page, I suggested they use the back of the paintbrush to draw in the curly hair. Oh how they loved drawing back into their artwork!

And of course, pink was requested and we discovered together that pink is made when you mix a lot of white to red.

As they finished, each little girl had the opportunity to draw over their painting one more time, really hard, with black oil pastel. I then had them run their fingers over the black oil pastel "like a car", making revving noises while they did it.

vroom, vroom, just like a speeding car, the 45 minutes were over and parents/nannies arrived for pick up.

And oohed and aahhed over these sweet little creations their children made. Can you blame them?

preschool silk paintings

A couple of post ago, I showed some portrait works the preschool class did of their favorite stuffed animals. That same day, they also drew their sketches on a piece of silk that I then traced over with resist to paint the next week.

Well, they took them home this Tuesday and precious does not even begin to describe the final results.

Using dyes on silk was a great lesson for preschoolers. It gave them a great chance to explore color and was overall just a fascinating experience for them to watch what dye does when applied to fabric.

I only gave the three-year-olds red, yellow and blue dye. The rest of the colors you see on these works they created on their own.

All these amazing colors created by three-year-olds!!

"Lovie"

Once finished, I set the dye and then removed the resist in warm water. I then ironed the silk and adhered it to canvas for their families to hang on the wall.

Because who wouldn't want to hang these on the wall?

"Jemima Puddle-Duck"

If you want more details to the project, leave a comment and I will share them with you.

"Bunny-bun"

I hope the children enjoy these paintings of their favorite stuffed animal for many years. I think this was a wonderful way to immortalize their first loves for them to look fondly back on the rest of their lives.

Because who in this world doesn't remember their first beloved stuffed companion and wouldn't like a picture to remember them by?

"Rainbow Bunny"

preschool 'my favorite stuffie' chalk pastel portraits

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.

self portraits in watercolor by three year olds

Right next to puppies and kittens, the cutest thing on earth is watching three year olds create self portraits.

Honestly, nothing could be cuter.

I put out a large piece of watercolor paper and gave each little girl a permanent marker. 

Then I placed a mirror in front of them so they would be able to see themselves and began asking them questions.

What shape is your face?

Draw a very big circle on your paper.

What connects your face?

Draw two lines to make your neck.

And here is where it got very cute.  I asked them to study their eyes in the mirror and then draw them. They then studied their nose, their mouth, their ears, and their hair.

They loved looking at themselves in the mirror and concentrating on their reflection and then they would draw their features exactly as you would expect a three year old to draw them.

So funny.

So sweet it made your teeth hurt.

After they finished drawing themselves with the marker, I gave them liquid watercolor in the three primary colors and asked them to begin putting in a background.

I encouraged them to mix the colors together to see what happened and gave them some salt to explore.  I was quite impressed how well they did not putting the backgrounds into their faces.

Then I asked them to put out their hands and asked what color was their skin, pink, yellow, or orange?  One said pink and the other said yellow. (I think she actually said orange but ended up just using yellow)

Then I showed them how to water down the color so they got a light pink or yellow.

Then they got to work painting in their hair.  Both had bangs and they may of been a little long but by no means did they hang down past their mouth.

Or their nose.

What a fun 45 minutes this was watching the girls create self portraits. What a great start to my Monday morning! No matter what happened the rest of the day, it was hard not to feel good after such an endearing morning.

I have no doubt these will be cherished works of art for years to come by their families. 

Preschool Monoprints

I'm learning a lot with the preschool class.

My goal the last two classes has been to try to develop an understanding on what happens when you mix the primary colors together. In other words, how to make orange, green, and purple.

The results at the end of class have been just about having fun blending the primary colors and enjoying the process.

I first had the three girls use the brayers and roll out a primary ink color onto a plate.  That alone was lots of fun. Using copy paper, we then laid it over top of the ink and pulled a print.  Again equally exciting and we hadn't even drawn anything!

Then using another primary color they rolled the ink across a plate and this time, drew into the ink with a Qtip.  When finished they used the same piece of paper, placed it on the ink with their drawing,  rubbed, and pulled another print.

The hope was they would see a new color created by combining two primary colors.  

We drew pumpkins in red and yellow ink and when I asked what color they saw, I got a resounding "GREEN!"

So I quickly abandoned the original plan and just let them explore rolling the ink onto the plates, drawing lines into the ink, and pulling prints.  

They had a lot of fun and after several prints, I quickly pulled out another type of plate I thought they would enjoy too- the gelatin plates I made during the summer.

"cat" 3 year old

I gave each child a little palette of ink in the primary colors, included white to create tints,  and a paint brush. I let them paint ink onto the gelatin plates until their hearts were content. (more ink than you can imagine was on the plates) I encouraged them to not completely blend all their colors with varying degrees of success.

"cat" 3 year old

Then again with the trusty Qtip, I had them draw a picture into the ink. 

I asked them what each of their favorite animals were and brought out some reference material for them to look at also.

Stop laughing. 

I know, reference material with three year olds. It was completely unnecessary but they did enjoy the idea of looking at the reference and putting it next to them to utilize while they drew, even though they paid no attention to it whatsoever.

"bunny bun" 3 year old

This child brought her stuffed bunny to class called, bunny bun. She had so much fun drawing it in both these prints,  although the top one is quite an abstract "bunny bun". 

Without doubt that was exactly what she was going for because I work with nothing less than genius three year olds,

Isn't it funny how as adults we want to create product out of projects? She certainly wasn't concerned with anything more than getting lost in process and was quite enthralled with the results from that simple perspective.  

I don't think she spent one minute thinking about what an amazing abstract bunny bun she created........

"bunny bun" 3 year old

I am quite proud of her with the above print. No doubt restraint when it came to not blending all the inks into one color was challenging. Not only did she not blend everything, she even created that pink shape by painting the negative space purple! (not that she realized that, but still, impressive) 

"penguin" 3 year old

And finally this little girl, you know that friend who isn't afraid to cannonball into the water without first checking to see if it's cold? I can think of no better way to describe this child.  She is ALL IN, all the time. No time to wait when there are things to be explored, just give her the paintbrush and let her go. I love the movement in the above print. To me, it captures her personality perfectly.

"cat"  3 year old

And then there is the penguin who became a cat. How great is her composition of thirds? You know she was completely thinking of that when she created this work.  Because again, genius child.

In the end, I know they enjoyed exploring the world of monoprints. And although they may not quite have the whole orange and green thing down, they certainly learned from their experience with color blending.

They learned it was fun.

And isn't that the most important thing of all? 

There are two spaces left in the preschool class. This is a drop off class, however I am perfectly fine with parents staying if that makes their child more comfortable. Please contact me through KudzuStudio.com if you are interested in your child joining the fun.

preschool pumpkins

This is the first year I have offered a preschool art class and although I am now trying to not run a class without at least four students, for preschool I made an exception.

How can one resist the charm of three year olds?

I have two absolutely darling little girls in the class. 

I decided to do the first project with paint and focus on color mixing.

Since it is October, it seemed only natural to make the subject matter Jack o'Lanterns.

First I gave the girls a black oil pastel to draw a 'big' circle and a horizon line.  I had a real pumpkin on the table for them to look at too.

I then gave them yellow and red paint.  We painted yellow in the 'sky' and red on the 'ground'.

OK in hindsight, I should of done this the opposite way.  The class starts at 10am, so I can't even blame it on a lack of coffee! I'm just going to blame it on being smitten with all the cuteness that came with having charming three year olds in the room. 

Once they painted the sky yellow and the ground red, I asked them to take red and yellow and mix it together in their circle. Then I asked them what color they got and they answered, "RED!"

sigh. 

It was a very red orange, not going to lie. So I asked them to add a little more yellow to the circle and tried again and I wish I could say there was an exclamation of "ORANGE" but alas there was not, except on my part in hopes of getting them to see they had created a new color.

I know they realized it, but to be honest, they were far more interested in just putting paint on the picture. Who can blame them, painting is fun.

I then put out some blue and they added it to the sky and ground. Again I asked them with varying degrees of success what colors they were discovering. Green was much more recognizable than the purple they were creating on the paper.

With white, I had them add a line for the stem. Then I quickly dried the work with a blowdryer while they washed the paint off their hands. To finish the work up, I gave them the black oil pastel again and let them outline things.

This was helpful to differentiate the pumpkin from the background and also a chance for them to add faces to their pumpkins.  I showed them how after making their lines and faces they could smear the black color.

They were not impressed that their clean hands were once again dirty with black oil pastel but it did help bring the work together.

When finished I asked them what color red and yellow made when mixed together and was met by the sound of crickets.  We'll do some more projects with color mixing in the future and I know over time it will click.

I am told by the mothers they had a good time, which is the point of the entire thing.  And I could not imagine two cuter little Jack 0'Lanterns than these ones.

There are two more spots available in this Monday morning class.  Contact me through KudzuStudio.com if you are interested in registering your little one.  We meet every Monday at 10am. Parents are welcome to stay or can leave for much needed "mommy time" for the 45 minutes.