Wednesday, October 2, 2019

10/2/2019

India Ink: "I'm painting it so gentle." Grace

Today more small groups went to use india ink at the light table. While yesterday's experience could be defined as exuberant exploration, today's work was more refined. Grace and Maren were the first to try the medium at the hallway light table. They shared their ideas as they used the ink:
   Grace - It looks a little grey.
   Maren - Does that look too much? It is too grey.
   Grace - Look how big my bubble is. (Grace played with holding a bubble at the end of her dropper before releasing.)
   Maren - (Trying Grace's approach.) Look, I made it ( a bubble at the end of the dropper) big! Now I'll try and see what happened. (She mixed ink into the water.) It got too dirty.
   Grace - (Erases page) I want to try and do what Maren did.
Maren - See what I did. I put a small circle and then a big circle around. See how I did a little darkness there.
Grace - (Begins painting.) She creates a large line.) I'm painting it so gentle.

The next group was Louise and Joslin.
   Louise - I'm going to make a Christmas one. I'm making a tree and that's the muscles so Santa can carry the tree."
   Joslin - (Turning the page around using drips to make lines.) I think I need to make it kind of thick. (She adds more ink.) (After hearing that the lighter shades didn't show up well when used on the projector....) I need to check this in the sunlight. (She holds it up to the window.) It doesn't show up much. (She adds darker shades of the ink.)

Bodies in Motion

Much to our delight, children have been eager to return to drawing almost every day! Today some children wanted to add more details or color to the movement sequence drawings that they worked on yesterday. Leigh worked on some fairly fanciful movements, such as "Dancing on top of someone's head," and "Dancing, clapping my hands, looking at the sky, and balancing on one foot." Children also worked with shadows and the figure drawings to create more body positions. As they traced the the drawing figure's shadow, they noticed some differences in relative size. The class didn't develop theories about why the shadows were different sizes, but we will explore that concept more in the coming weeks..