more collaborative art ...

The Together painting have been popular... and they continue to be...

I returned to black and white again to see how the children would react after using lots of colour... I was sort of expecting a negative reaction... but there was not... they simply got on with creating.

I do, though, see that this painting is moving more and more into a sensory experience rather than an expression of ideas and creativity... so I am considering putting these collaborative artworks on hold for a while and putting up individual paper to see what happens to the art then... will the children choose a subject for their painting when they know that the painting belongs to them?

Have the children decided that it is not worth while to paint a specific subject when they see how it quickly disappears under the paint of another child?

There IS a great deal of joy in these paintings... and the sensory experience is worth while too.

using hands to paint and to paint with was important for the three children that stayed to paint for a longer time... the same three children that usually paint for a longer time...

This week I took one of the previous Together paintings to use as a background for how "friend" can be represented in art... my first question "what is a friend?" was being answered... but then got put on hold as the children felt it was too tricky to explain... so the question became, "how would you draw a friend?"

• a person
• a princess-me
• an angel
• an angel
• "gubbe" - old man

The children then drew their representations on the artwork using black pens. It was obvious that they took inspiration from each other... there was also a discussion about "I want to draw like O" - and we discussed the difference between drawing like someone else and being inspired by someone else... that in fact we are learning to draw in our own way...

the figure in the bottom right is one of the angels.. the hair was done in the same manner as the other angel... rather than trying to recreate the look this child recreated the action and rhythm of the first angel's hair, second from left at the bottom. The angel on the right comes complete with beard and mustache too! The princess-me (middle top) developed wings, inspired by the drawing of the  angel and the person (on stilts) on the bottom left receieved a crown, inspired by the princess. The youngest in the group drew his first person that I have seen him draw at preschool - what we call in Sweden a huvudfoting (headfooter) as their lacks the body... there are arms, legs, ears and hair sprouting out of the head - as well as eyes, nose and mouth - this child did not watch the others as much as drawing his old man required all of his concentration. He was very proud of the end result - and was given extra time to finish until he felt satisfied as the others got ready to go outside, this was also appreciated by him.