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begin all of my art classes with a series of warm-ups
(sometimes called stretch & sketch). Artists as like athelete,
the first thing they do is warm up and stretch before they ever do
any serious working out or races. A musician practices scales, an
artist practices lines, circles, squares, and triangles. Warming up
gets you ready to enter into the creative space. Warming up makes
it easier and less of a leap.
At
Franklin I am fortunate to be able to have an one of the portables
to call the art room. I drew a big circle on the
floor with blue tape. The circle is a way to center things, it is
also one of the fundamental shapes.
No
matter if students are adults or a little person, we all do the
same warm-up. Everyone gets a tablet of newsprint and a pencil.We
sit in a circle, take three deep breaths we begin to draw by placing
a dot in the middle of the page and then all drawing a spiral out
until we fall off the page. As we do this several times, tearing
off sheets of paper and drawing on the backs, we change directions,
going out to in, clockwise, then counter-clockwise. We also use
our other hand (non-dominate) which always freaks
out everyone and creates lots of joy in the moment in the room.
This changing of hands is not only fun but serves as a way to access
both side of the brain.
The
LEFT side of the brain is your verbal, rational
side, where words, numbers, and step-by-step thinking accurs. The
RIGHT side is non-verbal and intuitive, it thinks
in patterns and pictures, and comprehends all at once, like recognizing
a friends face. Both sides are extremely important to have access
to, especially
for kids as they are establishing higher brain functions and motor
skills. We will practice using both hand drawings throughout the
entire year.
One
of the most important art school expereinces I had was with a teacher
who did not let us use erasers or our reguliar hands. After a 3
hour class drawing the figure I would crawl back to my dorm room
to nap out of pure exhaustion. I had a breakthrough that semester
in my drawing and never drew the same.
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