K was introduced to water-colour paints for our next open-ended art activity.

When he first dip his brush into the watercolor palette and applied the brush on the drawing paper, he frowned at what he saw, and told me that he did not like water-colours. As the paint colors could hardly be seen (we have been using tempera paints, and the color pigments on paper is a lot darker)

I had to spend some time explaining to him that watercolors are usually very light and transparent. Did a sample creation of my own artwork with watercolors to demonstrate that watercolors have a very different outcome on paper, compared to the tempera and poster color paints that he was used to.

After he was convinced that watercolors were different and not so bad after all, he went on to paint an ‘abstract’ creation of gradation shades of green and orange. Then he ran into his room and came back to the hall with a pack of markers, and started adding on to his artwork.

Again, all I saw was stick people, differentiated in groups of different colors, with speech bubbles coming out of their heads and lots of numbers. Sure looks like his usual style of drawing, I thought. But boy, was I blown away when I asked him what was this artwork all about.

He told me to write all that he will dictate to me. As this dictation will be a write-up for his ‘Masterpiece’ (in his own words), next to his drawing. Very much like how art museums always have a short explanation of the artwork displayed next the artwork itself.

“It is in Japan because of the flag, the Japanese people (referring to the stick people in blue) are looking at the art piece in the museum. And the tourists too, the American guy cut his leg when he was kicking the sign (the stick people drawn with a pencil). The Turkey people (the ones in red) just love the art, they are saying, “Is this a good artist? But if you don’t see and don’t make this, you are a bad artist.” The ones in orange are from Malaysia, they just love cupcakes and they think that this is a extinct cupcake.

But actually the sign says that it is extinct guns and weapons and extinct volcanoes too, and some extinct dead people. The art is made in 1963. The purple numbers means that the people can be any age to look at the art piece. 5 and 6 years olds can also look at it. There is a TV on top so that the 5, 6 year olds can watch the TV and be distracted away from the violent art piece.

The statue has extinct buildings and houses and dinosaurs too. The house is 700,000 years old and they are extinct and crushed. The blocks inside the art piece (I think he meant apartment blocks) has the numbers 65 and 75. There are extinct animals and people. When the people are 100 years old, they die, but the animals only die when they are 200 years old.

Outside the museum there is a sign that says, the museum opens at 7 o’clock. And the outside of the door says ‘Open and Close at 7 o’clock’. The museum advertises robots fighting but the robots will explode in 1963.’

Then he loudly exclaimed, “That’s it. This is my masterpiece and I am an artist today – not an author and illustrator, so you have to write for me.”

I was quite amused by what he said. The word ‘tourist’ was explained to him two days ago when we spent an afternoon at Sentosa. Hearing the story that he created behind this art piece gave a good glimpse into the things that he tends to spend a lot more time thinking about. While others were learnt through new picture books that we read the last 1 month. From dinosaurs, weapons, volcanoes, dead people, people from different countries, violence in art, signs, time and year, and advertising.

What I learnt from this experience :

- There were facts addressed in his story that did not correlate with the facts that he learnt; i.e, about buildings and people being extinct, but I made a point not to correct him. This activity was meant to encourage higher level of abstract thinking through his creations (thinking out-of-the-box) and not correctly answer factual information.

- This demonstrated how art can help with a child’s self-expression, create opportunities for problem solving and creative stories behind the art work. There have been research studies done to prove that art therapy works in children to bring out suppressed emotions to the surface, where parents/teacher can help address them.

- It proves that parents should never under-estimate the simplicity of symbolism used in open-ended art. Free-expression can be encouraged in open-ended art, and children can be given the freedom to add any symbols that they want in their creations; words, numbers or anything abstract. Most importantly, ask open-ended questions after the child have finished the artwork and encourage the dictation of the stories behind their creations.

- Visiting art museums can be beneficial for children. Children exhibits may be beneficial as it gives children the avenue to play and interact with the displays that are set up, but I think what is more beneficial is for the child to experience the regular art exhibits in the museum.

from Roubs Production Flick

Visiting the art museum is a wonderful way to encourage your child’s appreciation and understanding of the arts. But do let them enjoy the art themselves. By all means, read the description of the art piece, the interpretation of the work by the artist. But let them enjoy the art, taking in the colors, the emotions behind each creation and the artist’s inspiration. Don’t feel pressured that you will need to interpret everything for them and have to ask them plenty of questions on each piece.

After experiencing such interesting outcomes and watching the process from our home-learning art lessons, I am so motivated to pursue more art experiences moving forward. K is not the only one who is learning from his art experiences, I am learning just as much from these art experiences too!

Do give this method a try with your next open-ended art experience with your child, and I am sure your child will delight you with their little interesting stories behind their art creations.

An edited version of this article was published on myplayschool.net

And here is how I incorporated open ended outcomes to a structured art experience.

I don’t know why children are provided with a plethora of coloring activities in preschool. They do colouring activities in school, colour in Sunday school classes, colour while at a child assigned area in a mall, colour when they are given crayons and coloring pages while waiting for their food to be served in a child-friendly restaurant.

Colouring does aid in fine-motor skills training, help children develop compliant skills by coloring within the lines, improve concentration and attention span, and builds color awareness by learning how to use the right colors for the right items in the picture. But I think, coloring probably benefits adults more than it does benefits the children, as it keeps the children busy and quiet for a while.

In fact, I think the Sunday School that K attends over-does it with coloring every week. All they do, after teaching children about a character development lesson for that Sunday, is to get them to color till the end of the lesson  So lately when the teacher feedback that K does not stop talking during class, I am very sure that it is an indication that coloring is boring him tremendously in class! He is showing resistance lately when it comes to completing his homework from school. He finishes the written sections but when it comes to coloring, he tells me that he gets very tired of coloring.

But does coloring have a place in teaching young children art? According to the research of Viktor Lowenfeld, coloring book pages take almost all creative thinking away from 50-60% of children. The other 40% of children may not be effected as they may have been given other creative exposure to open ended art experiences to encourage their creativity. In fact, if a child continually focus on only colouring, he might find it hard to be satisfied with his own drawing. And might get frustrated when his drawings do not look like the adult drawings in coloring books.

I don’t intend to stop K from coloring, however, I will not provide any form of structured pages coloring activities from the art experiences that I will provide for him during our home-learning art sessions. Here’s is an article that I wrote for myplayschool.net about the pros and cons of Structured Art and Open-ended art experiences.

So when I came across Susan Striker’s Anti-colouring book 3 years ago, I knew that I had to get a copy of that book for Kyle when he turned 5. These Anti-Colouring books with their open-ended ideas of presenting ‘canvases’ for children to draw and create on the pages will encourage opportunities for critical thinking, problem solving and thinking “outside the box”. Here are some sample pages to try, best recommended for kids above 5 years old.

For our recent warmup activity for our open-ended art lesson, I got him to try a page from the book. This was the first time that K encountered an open art activity which involved ‘adding on’ to some ideas on the page, he was a little apprehensive to try it at first, but with some encouragement and modeling, he started adding onto the page.

K’s drawing strongly reflects that he is in the symbolic stage of his art development, and enjoys incorporating words and numbers into his drawings.

We then went on to an open-ended art activity, and I was quite amazed by the result of it.

Read my next post tomorrow to find out what transpired during the activity.

In the meantime, here’s a post I wrote in myplayschool.net of a structured art activity I did with K, incorporating a open-ended outcome.

After two evenings of freestyle art exploration with cotton swabs and on aluminum foil, K and I dived into the foundational techniques of drawing. I got him started on some introductory exercises from Mona Brooke’s book, which focused on the five elements of shape: the dot, the circle, the straight line, the curved line and the angle line.

After the initial warm-up, I showed him a picture of a cat like this picture here,

and I told him that he could draw cats. Any type of cats, it can look like this, or he can draw his own cat.

(K, I think is a closet cat lover. He claims that he prefers a dog for a pet, but the soft-toys that he has developed affinity for are all cats, and there are like at least 4 different ones).

K went with the suggestion of drawing his own cat, or rather, cats and ended up with a drawing like this.

These stick men figures in the picture shows that K is still in the symbolic art stage, and he hasn’t move to representational stage. (Here is an informational article about the stages of art development in a child OR do read Susan Striker’s Young at Art to understand more about children’s art development).

According to Mona Brookes and Susan’s Striker’s books, Symbolic drawing is perfectly normal in a child’s development. Parents or art educators should try not to interfere with their child’s effort to express him/herself through this form. It should not be compared to realistic drawing, and it is best not to push the child to prematurely stop this activity. When children draw symbolically, they have internal conversations about what they are drawing, which in turn, helps them communicate and deal with symbols.

If I did not read both books, I might have the common notion that I should try to ‘help’ my child to ‘progress’ to the representational/ realism drawing stage, and be naturally concerned that he is possibly slow in his drawing development.

As mentioned in the books, only the rare child learns how to draw realistically or representationally on his own. Learning to draw is like learning to play the piano, learning to dance or to write. There are the occasional gifted or talented child who picks it all by himself/herself.

Symbolic drawing is a lot about how the child communicates and in this instance tell a story. As K went on to tell me that after illustrating the pictures, he wanted to author his drawings.

Text deciphered :

‘The cats are running away from us

We must do something

About the cats

We must catch them

Ok GT Ng (apparently that’s him) Ok spiderman

We need the gold

So we need to punch the cats face

Ok we need to kill them’

At this juncture, he told me, “Imagine you read all that, and then go to sleep, you will have a bad dream.” So he told me that it is important that he adds the last sentence, to justify the violence of punching and killing  -_-

‘They are bad cats’

Again, this development did not happen overnight, as it started with our daily read-alouds, highlighting the illustrator’s name and the author’s name of each book. And then repeatedly telling him that we all can be illustrators and authors too.

His writing journey started almost 6-8 months ago, started with simple 1-2 element drawings, and simple phonetically sounded words. As he continued with his line drawings leisurely whenever he wanted to draw, he did occasionally write some words with the drawings.

Often I am unable to figure out the words, until he ‘reads’ it out for me, but I never once gave him the pressure to spell the words correctly from the start. Also i did not correct his use of upper and lower case in his words, as I believe ability to use upper case or lower case in sentences, will eventually be picked up from our daily read-alouds.

It was only from this month, that he has been requesting to spell the words correctly. So he tells me the sentences that he wants to use to describe his drawings, I then encourage him to sound out words phonetically, letter by letter.

So this experience have proven that indeed drawings or art have lots of direct influences in a child development in literacy, and possibly many other academic areas as well.

Next post on Home Learning Art Lessons – Learning about the forms of shapes and exploring oil pastels with abstract art.

This post was published in myplayschool.net

Do you agree with this statement; ‘ A real artist draws from his/her imagination and don’t need to copy things.’

I used to agree with this whole-heartedly, after hearing all too familiar exclamations from proud parents from the baby boomer generation about their children who have shown some good results in in art; “My son, XX, draw/created this all by his imagination. See how unique it is, I haven’t seen anything that look like that before!”

But after reading this book a while back, it has changed a lot of pre-conceived notions that I used to have about children learning art. And has truly empowered me to believe that even as a non-artist, it is possible to nurture my child’s creativity and interest for art.

‘Drawing with Children – A Creative Method for Adult Beginners too’ by Mona Brookes

This book is written from the perspective of an international acclaimed art educator who runs her own art school in the States. Who have successfully brought out the artists in many young children to middle age adults.

Many of the people whom her art programme have nurtured, show little or no prior talent in art. ‘A real artist draws from his/her imagination and don’t need to copy things.’ was one of the key points that were mentioned in the book that strongly de-mystified the process of learning art.

Most renowned artists who work with realism, or subjects in nature or animals, usually observe these things in its natural environment. Also use photographs, look at other visual references and make rough sketches from picture of those things, so as to study the structure and shape of what they will draw. Some will re-arrange, add ideas from their imagination, or remove some details from the original picture to create their original piece of artwork.

What is even more interesting, is that famous artists like Picasso and Michelangelo both copied artists work for two years as part of their initial art training. Degas also worked with photographs of his subjects, and plenty of painters have used other paintings for inspiration.

Two dancers by Edgar Degas

So does this fact about famous artist dis-mystify the process of how children/adult can learn art?

Imagination does play a huge part in the process of art, however it is not mutually exclusive from how people can learn or observe from visual references.

Her book also brought out valid arguments towards:

- why one does not need to exhibit a talent to be given formal lessons in art,

- the ability to draw can be learnt,

- structure drawings lessons are appropriate for young children. Children do not just develop their ability through free exploration and expression only.

I highly recommend this book if you are keen to start your own journey towards becoming an artist, or plan to embark on a DIY home-learning journey to teach your child art.

As I continue on my Art Home-Learning journey with K, I will be making numerous references to the techniques mentioned in this book.

Most of us are used to the idea that we need to attend lessons to pick up a skill. Maybe it's in our culture or a mindset, that we can only learn from an expert or someone who is trained formally in that skill.

Ever since I became a full time mom, the mindset has changed and I have proven to myself that it is possible to pick up a skill without formalised lessons. I have taught myself cooking and sewing all through recipes and the sewing tutorials available from the internet.

This time, I am taking on another challenge. Teaching Kyle art, while also learning art at the same time. I took art for my O levels, but had very little interest in Still Art, which to me, was the dullest technique that I have learnt through through an art education. Maybe I am just bias towards classical art, or simply have little interest towards it.

It would have been a totally different story, if I read children art books from Laurence Anholt, Katie Series of books from James Mayhew; exploring artists from the Italian Renaissance to Post-Impressionism. Classic art appreciation did not quite happen for me until I became a young adult. Even till today, my preference for art strays far away from classical art, looking at my choice of art prints around the house.

To get our art journey started. I got a couple of children's books with the theme of encouraging creativity in art.

Top L-R  The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, Ish by Peter H. Reynolds, The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola, The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg, Not a Box by Antoinette Portis and Lines that Wriggle by Candace Whitman

Art is really all about the process and not the product. But it is hard to get a 4 year old to understand it. Kyle has been doing alot of open ended art with different mediums since turning 18 months old, but he has always been not too enthusiastic about the product he creates. So to help build his confidence and fan the interest towards arts, I went with a different strategy to get him to enourage his exploration of art.

He created these pieces with little encouragement needed and willingly sat through 2 full hours of drawing and colouring! It really amazes me how interest can encourage his attention span towards the activity.

The technique I used was to scaffold the learning, breaking up the shapes and the details of the picture step by step. This way, it makes it easy for him to follow and adapt his own preferences into the picture.

Since we have started on this method, he has been asking to draw every evening, and have asked to do more art activities. So I think it's time to re-introduce new open ended art experiences , before embarking on some classical art exposure. From there, with the exposure, it will help to develop his preferences for art in general.

As for my art experiences so far, my preferences lean towards illustration. I have been squeezing whatever time I can find to doodle and colour into my sketch book. Learning slowly from japanese doodle illustration books, a doodle at a time.