World Wide Day of Play

I promised to bring music along with me to class and I finally remembered. I found a great cd called, "Mozart for Your Mind." Certain classical music is supposed to boost your brain power during studying. It helps your brain organize information and retain it. I figured it couldn't hurt while drawing as well.

The Saturday class focused on learning how to draw a cube. We have been working on forshortened circles and cylinders in the previous classes. We learned how to draw a present and other cube like objects.

After class I rushed over to the World Wide Day of Play where Pen & Mouse Design House Inc. had a booth set up for art instruction as well. We had over fifty young artists come to our booth where we also taught them how to draw a cube with our handy dandy cube drawing worksheet. Many were surprised how easy it actually was. The rain held off but it was pretty dark. We hope in the end we at least got our name out there and maybe will have some new recruits join soon.

We had a drawing to give away three goodie bags with our little orange TY beanie, pencil case, pencils, and fancy erasers. Congratulations to the ones who won! We can't wait for the next playdate!

(I'll add the Club House Artist's artwork next week as I forgot my camera during class. Stay tuned.)

This Little Piggy

My sweet little 6's were studying about the "Three Little Pigs" at school lately and all the different versions of that story you can imagine. They are pretty seasoned now with drawing their cubes, so I figured this would be a perfect way to introduce drawing houses and buildings. Now I'm just waiting for their teacher to ask them to draw them at school. I can see her eyes now when my Club House Artists whip out their 3D piggy houses.

Space, the final pencil frontier!

The Club House Artists and I were focused today. We had a mission of creating the coolest space station around. So focused that I looked up at the clock and class was almost over. Holy circuit breakers! We only had a few minutes left to cover how to draw the craters on the moon and super quick UFO. Time flies when you're having fun!

M (age 5) joined our super team today. We put a bungee cord on her and she held on tight. Soon she found herself drawing a space station worthy of the award,"Best in it's class" for newely engineered space station. She kept up with the older kids as we focused again on our foreshortened circles. We are repeating the shape again so that they can better understand how to build objects using just one simple 3-D shape.

Check out their most awesome work only after two classes, but do remember little M just begun! Betcha, you can't tell either!

For homework the Club House Artists drew more cakes. They were challenged to draw as many tiers as possible. Try counting to see how they did! T took hers to the next level and added color! Br said his was a quick drawing to see how fast he could draw his super tall cake.

We all draw alike

I started a new class session. This group ranges from 9-11 yrs old. I probably sound like a broken record already, but again it's so amazing to see their drawings transform so quickly once they've learned some of the tool box words. It's also interesting to see that the older kids current levels are the same as the younger ones when drawing houses and airplanes. So it seems that the only differences are, the older ones draws are more controlled and add more detail. That's where most people's art knowledge usually stops unless they have someone to teach them these simple tool box words. I can guarentee that if I ask an adult to draw a house or an airplane their drawing will also look exactly like a 6 yr old's drawing of a house. Not that they are trying to just be simple, but that's where a majority of our art instruction has stopped. By the way, I do get a lot of adults asking if I can teach an adult class, and the more I'm thinking about it, I just might.

Building Shapes

It's so amazing to see how quickly the kid's drawings transform once they learn the tool box words and apply them to their drawings. Today we talked about how to build objects using our cubes, spheres, and boxes. They drew most excellent tables with huge bowls of their favorite breakfast cereal. While talking about spheres we also drew a fish bowl and A suggested instead of a fish we should draw a tadpole since their classroom has one.

We finished class with a robot. A, drew a Nanny robot bringing a blanket to a crying child in her room. L, drew a laundry robot. Check it out below! Are you as amazed as me? These kids ROcK!

L (age 6)

Ideas on the fly!

The girls have been real troopers. They fought through drawing cubes and finally had decent ones by the end of class. First, we made presents to celebrate school. I asked the girls for homework to draw a page full of presents. To imagine how many presents they wanted Santa to bring them. Then I asked each girl how many presents did they want for Christmas. They all shouted, "ONE!" So either they are really good kids and/or really smart kids!

I'm finding that having preplanned drawing ideas is only sometimes needed. These kids come up with great ideas during class that we turn into the day's drawing. While talking about presents one mentioned that she accidentally found her Christmas present in the laundry room where her Uncle had been. She was looking for him and then accidentally saw her present. After she told that story one of the girl's exclaimed, "Your Uncle was in the laundry machine?!" That gave me the idea of showing them how to draw laundry machines using the cube they just learned to draw. They had a blast coming up with ideas of what to show in the washer window. One drew her sister!