Making Art With Children

Big Happy Faces   - A Big Happy Face

                                                                              A Big Happy Face by Zaire 1st Grade

Making Art with children is always fun and inspiring.  I am always trying to get them to fight the urge to draw teeny tiny things and grow their pictures to the entire dimension of their paper and beyond it.  In my opinion it is the only problem they face since we are all born with an innate ability to be creative in a natural way.  This lovely expressive portrait was done in my YMCA after school program by a lovely little 5 year old girl named Zaire..picture the biggest brown eyes, a head full of elaborate braids and clad head to toe in little girl pink.  She sat down and did three of these and insisted this one was for me to take home...so cute.  There is so much we can learn from the way children approach artwork and life in general they are often overlooked as the wise beings they are.

 

We had so much fun I decided to do this with all three of my 1 - 2nd grade classes the following week -  Big Happy Faces were a hit with the kids - the ones below are done by first drawing in Oil Pastel on Watercolor paper and then painting with water color.