Teaching Kids About the Figure: Fine Art Lesson 1- The Head.

This Lesson was Taught to Ages 3 through 6

Teaching kids about the figure is definitely an ongoing project as there is so much to explore.  I wanted my students to recognize that there are countless ways to approach the figure, from realistic to abstract to expressive, etc.  After showing the children various types of figure drawings, paintings, and sculptures done by a number of artists, we began focusing in on the head.  I showed them portrait paintings by people like Vango and Picasso to get a look at some abstract and expressive approaches, and I pointed out how they don't necessarily always use skin tone colors.  We covered symbolism a little bit and that there could be intentions behind intense colors used in many of the faces we saw.  We got into the whole discussion about how different colors can express a certain mood, and that perhaps some of the "blue faces" we were seeing meant that the artist was trying to convey a message of sadness and that the red ones by some artists seemed "hot" or "angry," and so forth.

After the lesson, the kids were given copies of faces that I had drawn up for them to explore different approaches to shading and coloring in a face.  I find that offering them drawings to color in gives them a chance to pay more attention to the face structure, before giving a lesson on drawing the face, but there is no right or wrong here.  Anyway, many of my students preferred the more abstract or expressive approach, where I drew obvious shapes to simplify the features on the head.  Some wanted to try something more "realistic" by adding shading with pencils and shading tools that we recently had a lesson on.  Nearly all of them loved the idea of coloring the faces in with intense colors to represent a mood.  This exercise ended up being a great outlet for the kids to express themselves.

There are countless lessons to be had on the figure, and we will certainly be coming back to this topic soon.  In the meantime, we are getting ready for an art show coming up at our school in April.  Stop by again in mid April, as we will definitely have photos up from the show.  

Please contact me personally for more information on the Little Wonders:

Angelique Bowman

Little Wonders Art Teacher

Collage Art Project for Kids ages 2 through 6

This activity was done recently with my students ages 2 through 3, but this is a simple project that could definitely be applied to older kids.  I offered pre-cut strips of craft paper, which is very helpful especially for little fingers just learning to cut, since it is easy for them to cut entire pieces off of the strip with just one snip.  A tip to show them would be to make sure the narrow part of the strip is all the way back and between teh blades so that only one snip is necessary.  While it's good for their fine motor skills, they also enjoyed pasting the strips onto cardboard with glue sticks.  My students also used markers to decorate the cardboard that they were gluing the strips to, and when they were all finished, we painted over each collage with tacky glue to keep it all in tact.  Any craft glue should do.

Pre-cut strips of craft paper to give the little ones a head start

These collages can be found on the website in our collage gallery, sold as greetings card prints:   

Collage Art Prints

Hope you enjoyed!

An Artist's Perspective on Art Made by Children

My Thoughts on Student Art

At first glance, artwork at this age may look very abstract and random, but as a teacher who spends lots of time with ages 2 through 6, I see a lot of the thought and concentration put into their work.  It's wonderful to listen to what what my students have to say about what they see in their own art.  I often walk around while my students are at work and ask them to talk about what they are making, and they often describe things in such detail and passion.  Of course, they don't use the terminology that fine artists might, but their imagination is strong and playful.  I especially find this true while my students are working on their artwork just after a lesson, since they have these new ideas just introduced to them that are fresh in their heads and ready to be worked out onto paper (or whatever the material may be).

Lately, I have also been encouraging the kids to title their artwork and it truly adds to the quality of their art.  I find that my students are often much more literal and to the point than a lot of us experienced fine artists try to be sometimes, with our catchy, clever, and metaphoric titles.  For example, one child painted a beach with rainbows and called it "Rainbow Beach," while another child made up a story about drinking all of the water from their pool... He titled his work, "When I Drank All of The Water from the Pool."  It was perfect, and needless to say, it made me smile and giggle a little.

I look forward to hanging out with my Little Wonders students as they are always full of surprises-- You just never know what level of creativity they will come up with next.  

The next time you see child art that might look like a bunch of scribbles or something abstract, just imagine what kind of detail and depth a child might see in it.

My students painting with watercolours

My Art Studio Expanded for Kids

My students now have their own space to create art in my studio!

In older posts, I mentioned that there was some renovations to make my art studio kid friendly.  The kids have had their own space for about a month now.  Here are some photos where they've been spending their time getting creative.

I have offered several stations for the children to branch off and do their own thing, such as painting, drawing and sewing.

Crafting/hand sewing station

Children have the opportunity to use the sewing machine with assistance, one at a time

Stay tuned as I plan on updating this post with photos of what the room looked like before!

~Angelique Bowman

City Art: Craft Activity by Kids

City Art Project Taught to Ages 3 through 6

The summer program has begun at Wonderland Arts, here in Durham, NC.  While we art teachers love to focus on art, especially while school is out and summer is here, it is also important that we continue to teach global education to our kids.  That said, after a fun lesson on cities around the world, I thought that building our own cities would be a creative way for the lesson to sink in.

The Process:
I had lots of pre-cut shapes that I cut from craft paper to offer the little ones who are still learning to cut, and each child could paste them on a sheet of construction paper however they wished.  But first, I gave a quick demo to the kids to give some ideas on what to do with the shapes.   My students were given markers and crayons as they were free to draw whatever they wanted.  They could also use scissors to cut up extra craft paper if preferred.  I offered to draw a vertical line on the construction paper to represent the ground, like a straight horizon line near the bottom of the paper, for kids wanted help determining where the ground was.  Others could draw their own with rulers.

Some children based their cities off of specific cities that we learned about, while others invented their own cities.  They all got really involved and felt really proud of their original artwork.  We displayed each city side by side for everyone's eyes to enjoy during the week.

Creating craft paper cities is a fun way to encourage kids to be original.  

Thanks for visiting!  Feel free to email me about signing your child up for our summer program at Wonderland Arts.

~Angelique Buman

All about the Little Wonders of Wonderland

Welcome!

My name is Angelique Buman and I am a Fine Artist who also enjoys teaching a variety of subjects to children, including but not limited to, Fine Art, Music, and educating children through the Montessori Method. I work at a Montessori School and a children's Enrichment Arts studio that collaborate well together to offer extensive opportunities of growth and enrichment for each child. Recently, I have opened up my art studio to teach small group Fine Art lessons to the children who attend these programs. This has already served as a great and creative outlet for the children and they look forward to having the opportunity to making real art that they can share with others.

I am respectfully treating the children like young fine artists, a.k.a. "Little Wonders of Wonderland," so that they can have a better respect and understanding of what the art world has to offer. I also started shooting professional pictures of their finished art work and the artwork is being uploaded to a new website that I just created for them. They will now be able to show off their art and their friends and family can even purchase prints of their images!

Please check out the website below and enjoy!
Little Wonders of Wonderland Art