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Practising art with children

finished workone easelWith pleasure I show you one of my very dear painting projects of the last few weeks. A mixed media work that Sara created for herself and her parents. She has just turned ten years old and created this slightly whimsical and fairytale-ish beauty of 80 cm square all by herself. Quite brave in my eyes. She has collected the finished work last Sunday and it looks so empty now in the house – despite all the Christmas decorations. I miss the warm colours, the 1001 night + Japanese feel it has got to it. Yet playful, it radiates also a very welcoming maturity.

How did she do it? We started of the first session with browsing the art books from Hundertwasser, Picasso, Flora Bowley and some others. We checked out Pinterest for favourite styles of collage. Because I like the expressionistic movement where the main function of art is to express feelings and emotions, the colour was going to be an important element. Her mother’s input was that she liked warm colours. So we did a colour test to see how the red and purple tones would turn out. The next week Sara started with the layers and used different types of brushes, spunge, hands and cotton buds to create a background. Masking and stamping adds a little bit of structure and depth, so that was also incorporated in this phase. It had become clear that Sara would like a natural canvass with elements of nature so she drew the bird, the sun and some flowers in the next week. Then she picked jewelry for the feathers, and felt flowers to make a Japanese branch. The cardboard butterflies, & crocheted flower were also collaged  onto the painted work. As a finishing touch a crocheted owl and fabric squirrel were mounted onto branch and ground, and a Japanese look unfolded.

What’s the offer? Along the way I discovered that she is a very talented drawer, picks beautifully corresponding colours and easily finds a composition that is pleasing to the eye. I taught her that it is allright to make mistakes on the canvass, to experiment, to just play with various techniques and try out your own techniques. If you don’t like it, start again and learn from it. This is a very useful skill to practice on. All of these hours working together has resulted that the painting is now displayed on the most prominent spot in their living room. This wonderful experience made me decide to incorporate this activity into my company. Everyone is invited to come and practice art with me. I promise you it will be beautiful (BE YOU tiful) We don’t stop until we are pleased and fulfilled with the result. You can contact me for details on the programme and price.

Let’s celebrate the magic of (working with) children. They are the inspirators of so much and with the running up to Christmas they are particularly the carriers of beauty, peace and love. Here’s a few more details and pics of the work:

collage 1collage 2detail Saradetail feather

Have a lovely evening. The stars are quite bright tonight. Have a look, hurry quickly 🙂