I teach art for all ages at the community center in my neighborhood Bridge Meadows.  Most of my students are children.  I try to make an easy going place for kids to express themselves, learn to deal with mistakes, and have a good time.  I do minimal instruction but give guidelines.  I also try to get them the best materials we can afford because I think the the kids deserve it. The better the materials, the less frustration.

One of my youngest students is Tomas, who is 4.  He’s loves to paint.  He doesn’t want crayons, markers or pencils.  He wants to slop around with watercolors. 

I hold class from 4:30 til 6 on Monday.  Children come late sometimes, but Tomas came with his brothers and mom at 5:45 and wanted to paint.  All the other kids that day were working with markers, oil pastels and colored pencils.  I didn’t want to get everything set up for him to paint when he was going to leave 10 minutes later.

“Let’s just draw today,” I told him.

“No I want to paint!” he said.

“But you need to draw sometimes, too.  You know drawing is like the skeleton of painting.  It’s the bones that hold paintings up.  You  know, like your bones hold you up.  Drawing holds up painting.   It’s the bones of art.”

He looked a bit mystified. 

“Not if you’re a snowman,” he said.

And that’s one of the great rewards of  working with children — they put things in perspective for you.

Mixing colors

Tomas’ Monday Masterpiece

For more posts on life at Bridge Meadows, you can click the tab in the heading.  You can read my latest post about it here:  Living the Rich Life.

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