February Art a la Carte

Eric's February Art a la Carte class was this past week. This time, instead of being off for the day, I had to work on call at the hospital the night before. Luckily, I got a chance to nap before meeting Eric for lunch.

This time I took a picture of the example that Mrs. R, the art teacher, had put on the bulletin board. The art lesson involved a little information about Norman Rockwell and how he liked doing self-portraits. They were focusing especially on winter-themed paintings.

First, she had the kids look into a mirror to see what shape their faces were. If their faces were more oval shaped, she had them draw around their hands with their fingers close together, and if their faces were circle shaped, she had them draw around their hands with their fingers farther apart. I thought this was a great way to help the kids draw the shape, although the problem was that their hands were so small that they had to draw way around their hands to get heads that were of a decent size.

Eric was very set on certain things. The example hat that they were supposed to draw had a puff ball on top, but Eric modeled his after his Minion beanie hat, so there was no puff ball. He thought about drawing a bunch of Minions on his yellow Minion hat, but in the end, he decided not to. This was probably a good thing because he would have had a difficult time drawing that detail with the chalk pastels.

They were also supposed to add some other colors to the background, such as more blue in different shades, and then snowflakes, but Eric most definitely did not want any of that, just more white. Mrs. R also told them to draw buttons on their coat, but Eric wanted a zipper, like on his coat. I love that he knew what he wanted and he stuck with it.

He wasn't the only one that had set ideas of his own. One of the other boys decided to draw an Iron Man hat and scarf--lots of red with yellow for Iron Man's mask. A couple of the kids said that they really loved art class. I do too, and I love learning a little each time I volunteer.