Funny paintings....

Today we started our new art project... Developed from something we dabbled in at a group we used to attend.

Each week we're looking at a different artist/painting technique, then we take elements of that style and create our own piece of art.

First up; Picasso. We looked at cubism and how 'funny' some of the portraits looked, with eyes and noses not in the normal places (again, another great project for understanding that you don't always have to do things the same way as everyone else does)

J decided he'd like to draw a spider, Picasso style.  We used bright colours and tried to replicate the use of two contrasting sides to the picture... A great attempt from J, who really wanted to paint the spider black, but compromised by using grey and adding some bright colours to the background.

Personally I love it :)

Thinking outside the box and other cliches...

I mentioned before that J is not that great at 'breaking the rules', and while that's commendable for most things, a little experimentation is a good thing.

We've done quite a bit of work on the great inventions/discovers of the world (Fleming, The Wright bros etc) as a prelude to this, and talked about how some inventions happened from just trying a different approach.

To help with this I bought a few books (okay all of them) by Keri Smith - I can't recommend her enough.  We've started with 'Wreck this journal'. Essentially the idea is that you use the book for all the things you're not supposed to use books for... Initially J wasn't convinced, but then he realised that sometimes these things can be fun too..!  

So far he's made muddy footprints in the book, scribbled madly, made finger paint marks (this was revolutionary for a child that doesn't like touching paint or paint on him) and even tried chewing paper (another ridiculously amazing breakthrough).. amongst other things.

Another book we've started is a pocket scavenger hunt, we look for everyday objects, like a stamp or a paper clip, and then make up a story about where it might have come from etc..  Great for using imagination.

I cannot praise the author of these books enough. And would thoroughly recommend them to anyone, but especially to children that can have a certain 'rigidity' to what they do, or have a strong reluctance to try new things.