Understanding Art: The Essence of Creative Expression and Its Importance in Development

1. Art An artistic Power Point

2. What Is Art? • free, creative self-expression • art vs. craft • Art has no desired outcome other than the artist’s • A craft does, but should still have an artistic component • Crafts should only be done when important enough • process vs. product • Process of inner revelation, experimentation, development and aesthetics • The outcome is unimportant, except to the artist by choice • Need not be totally open-ended • Can have theme or age-related limitations • Should always allow for choice, including whether to do it and how to do it

3. What Isn’t Art • Crafts • Coloring books • Dittos • Product-oriented projects • Working from models, required or suggested • Tracing, copying, coloring in • Gimmicks • Rubbings, unfoldings, stampings • Use of stickers, googly eyes, etc.

4. What not to do • Art should not be judged or compared • Art shouldn’t be corrected or finished • Art shouldn’t be joined or modeled by the teacher • Art shouldn’t be used for academic lessons • One shouldn’t • Say what it looks like • Say whom it should be for • Say when it’s finished • Ask what it is • Write on it without permission

5. If children ask • to help them • Try to defer back to their skills, ideas and process of development • what you think of their work • Praise them, as needed, with specifics, about their efforts • But empower them when ready toward self-assessment • what you think it is • Don’t bite

6. Appropriate Feedback • Would you like to tell me something about what you did? • How do you feel about it? • I noticed that…. • Where would you like your name? • Would you like something written about it? • Would you like to share it with anyone?

7. Benefits of Art • Creativity • Self-expression • Self-revelation • Independence • Time occupation • Individuality • Eye-hand coordination/fine motor development • Concepts of color, shape, texture, changes in matter, directionality, symbolization • Sensitivity • Attention span • Patience • Stress release • Introduction to culture • Therapy

8. Types of Art • Drawing • Crayons, markers, chalk, pastels • Variations in shape, texture and color of paper • Advantage: very easy and independent • Painting • Easel, table, watercolor, finger, sponge, sand, object • Variations in size of brushes, texture of paints, paper, use of body • Advantage: special, vivid colors, color mixing, verticality • Modeling • Clay (moist, earth, modeling); Playdough (basic, cooked, textured, edible); Papier Mache (flour, glue, paste, starch, wallpaper paste and water) • Advantage: three-dimensional, craft oriented (lasting and useable) • Collage • Buttons, fabric, styrofoam, feathers, leaves, shells, cellophane, glitter, montage • Glue in squeeze bottles, cups w. brushes or sticks, glue sticks; colored glue; paste • Advantage: good for curriculum integration, informational as well as expressive • Also • Woodworking, mosaics, mobiles, weaving

9. Stages of Art • 0-1: Child doesn’t draw; puts crayon in mouth • 1-2: Early scribbling stage • First half: just exploring and enjoying sensori-motor experience • Second half: connecting movements to markings on paper, making dots, lines, squiggles; beginning to gain some control • 2-3: Transition stage (later scribbling) • Bolder stroke, greater space, more deliberate use • Accidental formation of shapes from lines and squiggles • Beginning to identify those shapes with objects, usually round first • Beginning to distinguish drawing from writing • 3-4: Basic Forms stage • More shapes being deliberately created to represent objects • Sometimes called “early representational” • Circles expanding to ovals, squares, rectangles, arcs • Fine motor skills becoming more refined • First attempts to draw familiar things

10. Stages of Art continued • 4-5: Pictorial Stage • Sometimes called pre-schematic • Have begun to draw familiar things, including people (tadpole person), also houses, animals, vehicles, nature, sky • Don’t draw what they see: draw symbolically, emotionally, developmentally • No attention to or awareness of accuracy: little to no perspective, invisibility, proportionality • Using smaller tools • 5-6: Transition to Representational/Schematic • Developing sophisticated grasp • Starting to become aware of and attempt more accuracy • Body is developing, including belly button • Things begin to sit on a baseline • 6-7: Beginning of Schematic stage

11. Interpretation of Children’s Art • Use of colors • Boldness and darkness of lines • Size of objects, particularly people • Facial expressions • Portrayal of self (solidity, size, parts, color) • Position of people and objects in relation to one another • Hint of story being told

12. Controversies in Art • The use of food • The availability of black and brown • Whether to only have primary colors available • Whether anything commercial, cartoony or teacher-drawn will necessarily be suggestive • Conservation of paper