Art Lab for Kids: Express Yourself

By Susan Schwake

Art Lab for Kids: Express Yourself contains 52 brand new original art projects that will draw out each young artist as they discover their style, document their thoughts, and build confidence in their unique perspective. Each lesson asks questions and offers personal choices while encouraging diverse approaches and creative thinking.

One of the most important gifts we can give children is to nurture their creativity and allow them to express themselves freely. There's no better way to express yourself than through creative art projects. This is especially true for children because it gives them an outlet to explore their developing interests and strengths.

The Colorful Beasts project, which incorporates discussion of endangered animals with the Blue Rider art movement, asks children to use torn colored tissue paper and glue to create an expressive representation of a favorite vulnerable animal. In I Built This City, children imagine and build their own cityscape using columns of newspaper text to make buildings on top of a watercolor painted background, and detailed with marker.

Many projects include varying examples and executions of the activity to illustrate and reinforce the open-ended nature of the labs, inspiring children to embrace and share their own voice.

Give children the great gift of creative self-exploration with Art Lab for Kids: Express Yourself.

The popular Lab for Kids series features a growing list of books that share hands-on activities and projects on a wide host of topics, including art, astronomy, clay, geology, math, and even how to create your own circus—all authored by established experts in their fields. Each lab contains a complete materials list, clear step-by-step photographs of the process, as well as finished samples. The labs can be used as singular projects or as part of a yearlong curriculum of experiential learning. The activities are open-ended, designed to be explored over and over, often with different results. Geared toward being taught or guided by adults, they are enriching for a range of ages and skill levels. Gain firsthand knowledge on your favorite topic with Lab for Kids.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781631595936

Book preview

Art Lab for Kids: Express Yourself: 52 Creative Adventures to Find Your Voice Through Drawing, Painting, Mixed Media & SculptureArt Lab for Kids: Express Yourself: 52 Creative Adventures to Find Your Voice Through Drawing, Painting, Mixed Media & Sculpture

CONTENTS

UNIT 1 GETTING STARTED

Why Should We Care About Self-Expression?

How to Use This Book

Art Materials List

UNIT 2 EXPRESS YOURSELF WITH DRAWING

Lab 1: Ink Stick Drawings

Lab 2: Right Hand, Left Hand

Lab 3: Blind Portraits

Lab 4: My Favorite Color

Lab 5: Night Creatures

Lab 6: Stars in the Sky

Lab 7: Colliding Contours

Lab 8: Repeat Yourself

Lab 9: Map of My World

Lab 10: Still Life—Twisted

UNIT 3 EXPRESS YOURSELF WITH PAINTING

Lab 11: Fold Me a Garden

Lab 12: What’s Your Superpower?

Lab 13: Stripes and Lines

Lab 14: Color Me Happy

Lab 15: Black and White

Lab 16: Color Pops

Lab 17: Around the Color Wheel

Lab 18: Fantasy Watercolor Gardens

Lab 19: Big Time Canvas

Lab 20: Forest and Trees

UNIT 4 EXPRESS YOURSELF WITH PRINTMAKING

Lab 21: Music-Inspired String Prints

Lab 22: Word Up

Lab 23: Texture Plates

Lab 24: Big Rolling Prints

Lab 25: Simple Prints

Lab 26: Selfie Pop Art Prints

Lab 27: Tape Stencil T-Shirt

Lab 28: Block-Printed T-Shirt

Lab 29: Bookplates

Lab 30: Swirly Prints

Lab 31: Paper Nature Prints

Lab 32: String Tube Printing

UNIT 5 EXPRESS YOURSELF WITH MIXED MEDIA

Lab 33: Circle Stitched Mobile

Lab 34: Wire Wonders

Lab 35: Woven Eye

Lab 36: Mixed-Media Collage

Lab 37: Art Trophies

Lab 38: Plaster Relief

Lab 39: Plastic Assemblage

Lab 40: Say It with Stitches

Lab 41: All That Glitters

Lab 42: Feelings Pots

Lab 43: Scrap Wood Sculpture

Lab 44: Balloon Bead Sculpture

UNIT 6 EXPRESS YOURSELF WITH PAPER

Lab 45: Colorful Beasts

Lab 46: I Built This City

Lab 47: Tiny Sketchbook Ideas

Lab 48: Make a Face

Lab 49: Tear Me a Tulip

Lab 50: A Bird in the Hand

Lab 51: Two-in-One Weaving

Lab 52: A New Me Collage

Gallery of Artists

About the Author

Acknowledgments

UNIT 1

GETTING STARTED

Beginnings are exciting places to be when you start a creative adventure! This book is a road map for the unique journey that begins and ends with you. The best art adventures are those that come from your own ideas and experiences. Fresh white paper, new boxes of color, and a full bottle of glue can be great inspirations. Sometimes it’s puzzling, though, how to bring your own ideas to paint and paper. This book helps you think through your ideas, find your voice, and express your individual style. Each lesson begins with a question, and through an artistic process with a variety of materials, each reader will craft a unique answer. Along the journey, the same question asked another time can yield a completely new, one-of-a-kind result.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT SELF-EXPRESSION?

Imagining something and then feeling comfortable enough taking the risk to act on an idea is the essence of self-expression. As children, we learn by doing and exploring the what ifs of the world. What if I jump from rock to rock to get to the other side? What if I use these twigs—can I make a nest like a bird? What if I paint all the colors from my paint box on top of each other?

As a guide or teacher in this artistic process, we must create a nurturing environment with space to explore materials and methods in a process-rich fashion. The single most important objective in the process could be allowing each child the freedom to see an idea through from imagination to creation, without outside interference or judgment along the way. Trying out new materials and methods should feel playful and experimental. End products are less important than the process. Art processes are meant to be practiced over and over, changing things at the maker’s discretion. Practicing the process of art making leads to creativity and builds a strong sense of self.

What do we gain from nurturing self-expression? A child practicing making art also practices decision making and working through problems within the process. Creating visual art from an imagined idea can be a powerful boost in self-awareness and self-worth. Self-expression grows from a place of confidence, trust, and truth.

Making art gives you a space to create a visual presentation of your imagination. Art is an important way of communicating feelings and ideas and more: It opens up an inner dialogue. Expressing yourself helps the developing self and nurtures emotional strength. Opening up to art with playfulness and curiosity promotes discovery of who you are and where you want to go. Art opens up new ways to see the world.

We want to value art not by measuring how exactly to reproduce the (outside) world, but to value it for the art itself, for the process, the act of creating, the glimpse of an inside view and the sparks of inspiration. What better art is there than art that is touching and connecting with your vision of the world?

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book was written to inspire the teacher, parent, childcare provider, grandparent, and anyone who wants to make art with (and possibly alongside) a child. It is always about the process in our studio—and enjoying the process deeply. For children, art is a way to convey their experiences and feelings about the world. It helps them define and evaluate their world. Sometimes, art making doesn’t go as planned and the end product doesn’t work out as envisioned—that’s okay. It takes a lot of practice! These lessons are designed to repeat over and over to gain competency through repetition, expand creative thought, and increase the maker’s skills. I have found as a teacher of both children and adults that everyone learns through practice. I encourage students of all ages to try the same lesson twice, at the very least, and let newfound knowledge guide the process. I encourage you, the adult, to work alongside the students to discover the joy of the process for yourself. Investigate your creativity again and help explain, without words, your world.

The following art materials list is a guide to often-used materials and a simple art studio setup. Itr is a comprehensive list for all the lessons in the book, but you don’t need all the materials for each lesson. Each lesson outlines the materials needed to create the project.

I encourage you to set up an area to exhibit and celebrate the art that is made. This elevates the process to a place to be admired and remembered. A simple string with clothespins to hang flat work can fit in the tiniest of spaces. A shelf or table can hold sculptural work. For larger rooms, a cork strip or wire curtain rod can run along a wall to hold a classroom full of artwork.

It is important to celebrate the creative process without making it all too precious. I often have parents lament about where to display or how to keep artwork in their homes. One of the easiest ways to hold on to the work is to photograph it and

Reviews for Art Lab for Kids

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

art explorations for kids (and grownups). These are more about process than product, more about learning techniques and experimenting than anything else--great for low-pressure activities to encourage kids' creativity and experimental thinking. Many of the activities will require specific art supplies/materials, but they all look like they would produce charming artwork from even the lesser talented individuals.

[pardamustang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Art Lab for Kids: Express Yourself by Susan Schwake has five different chapters, focusing on different tools and mediums. Most projects are easy to carry out. My cubs and I worked through the book together. They chose several experiments that they found unusual or interesting, and several that they really enjoyed:Weird experiments include:Blind portraits, where you keep your gaze completely focusing in a partner while you draw them. The results are quite interesting. Stripes and lines, where you paint a composite of just thin lines and fat stripes. Big rolling prints, that teaches you how to use big round plastic jugs to make jumbo printing presses.Wire wonders, where you get to make funky wire sculptures.Colourful beasts invites artists to sketch out their favorite animals, and fill in the shape with colourful strips of paper.Fun experiments include:Night creatures, where you draw a night creature out, then paint it with water colours. Colour pops, where you lay down a colour background and overlay with black/grey foreground.Texture plates, involved in learning to use different textures in your projectsAll that Glitters, where glitter is the name of the gameTwo in one weaving teaches a unique method of weavingA great book for sparking creativity, and get kids interested in art. Perfect for classroom projects! ***Many thanks to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing for providing an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

[csaulpaugh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Last year I worked at a before/after school program and the kids just loved doing art projects. I got so many good ideas from this book. The open ended projects allowed for creative exploration and were great for the wide range of ages that I worked with.