self-portrait as a dot....

Every year on or around September 15th, teachers and students around the world celebrate International Dot Day. Based on Peter H. Reynolds' book The Dot, kids are encouraged to explore their creativity, starting from something as unpromising as a dot.

This usually coincides with my colour mixing unit in Grade One science. So one year I had my students paint themselves as dots.

First, I handed out paper dessert plates (sturdy ones). The kids painted them with one of the primary colours (red, blue or yellow) in a watercolour wash. Then they got to choose a second primary colour to mix with the first one by dropping it into the wet paint that was already on the plate.

The next day, I handed out pieces of acetate that had been cut to the right size for the plate. I gave the kids permanent black markers, and asked them to draw their own faces. Then I tacked the plates up  with the portraits in front of the wash they had made.

Lastly, I "connected the dots" with string when I put all the portraits up on a bulletin board. This became a provocation in exploring the meaning of "community," and specifically of our class as a community.

I think if I were to do this again, I would let the kids draw the lines between the dots with white chalk, to show and talk about how they are connected to each other. To map our classroom community. Maybe arrange the dots in a circle, to simplify it.

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messy painting....

There is a time and a place to teach your little ones to rinse their paint brushes in between colours. I call it “painting like grown-ups.” I use a cardboard egg carton for each kid and put a small squirt of whatever colours they are using in each “cup.” They can use the lid or extra egg compartments to mix colours as they need to. And best of all, I can simply recycle the egg cartons when they are finished with them. All I have to clean up is the brushes.

This post, however, is not about one of those times!

Every September I get my grade one students to make an artwork involving dots on International Dot Day. Based on Peter H. Reynolds’ book The Dot, Dot Day celebrates creativity. (All you need is a starting place, and that might be as simple as a dot.)

So this year, I just put out the three primary colours (red, blue, yellow) as well as orange, green, and turquoise (I think). I asked the kids to paint one or more dots. I set up the paints in groups of four or five kids; with one brush per colour. I told them they didn’t need to wash their brushes between colours; the yellow brush would go back in the yellow, the blue in the blue, etc.

Of course that didn’t happen.

Inevitably, brushes got put back in the wrong colours, or got some other colours on them while the little artists were colour-mixing on their papers. And that’s where the magic happened.

The kids started making loose, lavish, juicy, uninhibited brush strokes — blue into green, yellow into orange, red into blue — and that’s how they should paint.

“Real” artists come in lots of shapes and sizes (so to speak), and some of them choose to paint flat areas of single colours with hard edges. But many enjoy and understand the value of not washing your brushes too often as you paint. Of not cleaning your palette. Of letting the colours blend and mingle and speak to each other.

I call it “messy painting.”

Just remember to stop before all of the colours turn to mud!


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