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March 7, 2006

creata: children's graphic development

by gl. at 9:49 am

this is the second in a series of posts about workshops sponsored by CREATA during Creative Arts Therapy week. session date mar06.

this was a much better presentation -- the woman who presented it really knew & loved her stuff. this is the same woman fror whom i dropped off my flyers for the information table when her dog bit me, and the first thing she wanted to do was check out my hand, which is doing pretty well by this point. the irony here is that by this time i had discovered the flyers weren't on the information table, so it was a good thing i had brought more with me! :D

there was an interesting bit about choosing different types of mediums for different intents, or "prescriptive materials," and it's things like this that are the reason why i attend CAT week. on a continuum of controlled to expressive/fluid, different activities & mediums & colors & positions & tools evoke different emotions for participants and choosing the rights ones is a big part of your job. also, there's a difference between "uncovering" and "building" activities and what sorts of themes they tend to evoke. i knew this intuitively, but it was nice to see it all laid out.

i knew many of the best practices for children could be adopted or adapted for adults, including this excerpt from "conditions for creative growth," which i feel very much guide the ways in which i've tried to use the studio for artist's way:

the experiential part of the program had us approximate the drawing style of a particular age group. this is where pix would come in handy, because some of the stuff i made is awesome, but we didn't have enough time to do all the stages so we just did three. :)

1.
1-2 years: disordered scribble, no motor control. children are just learning how to hold the pen and make marks. though naming & storytelling don't begin to happen till 2.5-3 years, i think this looks like a monster with a banner flying behind it. :)

2.
2-3.5 years: the first shape we learn how to make is a circle, and we do it over and over and over again (very ringu, eh?). we learn lines, then boxes and triangles last. we develop "tadpole" people, round blobs with legs. in this stage we rarely cross the lines and consistent paper orientation doesn't matter.

3.
6-9 years: representational figures & baseline appear; objects move discreetly from left to right.

drawing earlier than these stages doesn't mean your child's a genius, and in fact, given too much praise, your child may begin to view art as a performance rather than a source of creative self-expression.

at some point, the presenter was talking about "accessing information available in your non-dominant hand" and then caught my eye and surprised me by saying, "right, gretchin? gretchin teaches an artist's way class and she has some flyers available on the table." *blush*

posted by gl. | March 7, 2006 9:49 AM | categories: artist's way, classes & workshops