We started working with painting stories for the first time this week. Up until this point all of the kids' paintings have been pretty much free-form, whatever they wanted to do. Now we are shifting into telling a simple story to set a color mood and suggest the movement of the brush strokes. So while the Blue Knight is striding surely across the meadow, our brush strokes are long and firm, while Merry Red is cavorting about, our brush strokes are short and light, when they interact with each other they have a different feel, while he carries her across the meadow they have yet another feel, etc. I just read the story (this one from the Enki Education 1st Grade Instruction Manual) and paint how I want to, and the kids follow as they will (which was actually fairly closely for this first time). Above is J's masterpiece, below is Zoo Boy's work of art. I am always, always wowed by Zoo Boy's paintings.
Below is my painting for comparison. I have to say, reading the story really helped me get into the right state of mind for painting, and this is probably the least contrived piece of work I've ever produced. I also have to say that our red is not nearly red enough, but we're running out of paints (I have more on order) so I had to make do with what we had. I probably should have called her "pretty pink" instead of "merry red"! By the way, this is wet-on-wet watercolor painting, in case anyone is wondering, which is what we do a vast majority of the time.
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