During this session of painting I want to explore each color separately, each on it's on canvas. This way each color really pops out on the painting area. This week was red! It always intrigues me that one week a child will spend just a few minutes with the paint and then the next they will really spend a long time exploring the medium. I always wonder... what changed? Is it the change in color? Something different in the environment? The way a child feels on that particular day? Maybe all of the above. This week Bryce spent just a short time with the paint whereas Max spent a long time exploring the paint and canvas (Max really wanted to walk on the canvas as he sees Sebastien do but wasn't too sure of the unevenness he felt as he tried it). This was just the opposite last week.
This was the first time Max & Bryce encountered the easel brushes and spill proof containers. This lead to the children spending some part of the painting experience getting to know these two new elements. These props presented physical challenges are important skills needed to go deeper into the language of paint. In addition to fitting the brush in and out of the container Bryce also has the red paint to that comes along with the brush to contend with.
Max finds a few spots on the painting area too and practices a dotting motion with the paint brush. These spots become layered with his marks. The dotting motion makes a sound along with placing paint, and we know how Max enjoys making sounds with objects. He also uses a paint brush in each hand until he gets more paint on one of his brushes.
Sebastien tries out each and every container and brush using both a dotting and stroking motion. I love how he places himself in the middle of the canvas and even when a pumpkin rolls into his painting space he adds a little color to it. As I describe and watch the children painting I am reminded of the following passage in the book Rapunzel's Supermarket by Ursula Kolbe. "Painting is a wonderfully sensuous experience. Plunging into colour with a brush, gliding, swooping, skimming along, changing paper into a playspace aglow with color - these are joys that enthral painters. In the rhythm and flow of painting the whole body is involved. Vision and movement intertwine. Painting is more, much more than making pictures. Being in a painting, becoming lost in it, is one way to describe the experience" (pg. 53).
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