Wednesday, May 22, 2019

"I feel I'm kind of like an artist right now."

As our final schooldays wind down we have been working to finish various projects, explore a little more of our favorite materials and workshops, and as always, enjoy being together. 

​Today this included:​​

• ​Collaborative sand-play including baking and setting up secret speeder video cameras
• Adding finishing touches on clay sewing projects
• Reviewing sewing work from earlier in the year (filing in our portfolios or planning to add some more details next week)
• Collaborative construction with Shelly's House, complete with hand-written sign
• Exploring painting mediums, watercolor and gouache, while creating self-portraits and other paintings

Many children chose to draw and paint self-portraits first and then create other paintings second, such as of flowers. Tegan created a portrait of her ladybug and James made a free-form or abstract watercolor painting. 

We compared the two paint mediums offered today, noting watercolor paint is TRANSLUCENT while gouache is OPAQUE. As seen in the title of this blog post and in the conversation below, this experience gave the children an opportunity to reflect on the questions we have been considering this week: What is an artist? Are you and artist? 

Tegan: "I think I like gouache better."
Elena: "Me too."
Joslin: "I'm experimenting with painting watercolors...how hard it was going to be to keep inside the lines." 
Caleb: "I need something for the hair." (Finds a color similar to the color of his hair.)
Elena: "I feel I'm kind of like an artist right now."
​

Photos from our painting experience

Being together and other experiences