October Art a la Carte

Eric's first art class for the year was today. The October schedule was already out, so I'm glad I was able to easily switch my day off so I could be there today. This year his art class is from 12:25pm-1:30pm, but his lunch is still at 11:05-11:35am, so there is an hour gap in between.

Last year he would say goodbye to me after he finished his lunch, and I would see him a few minutes later in his art class. Today I said goodbye to him after he ate his lunch very quickly, then I went home to have lunch, then I went back to his school for the art class. His lunch was still the same as last year's lunch, however, 10 spicy chicken nuggets and a small vanilla Frosty from Wendy's.

Today's lesson was about abstract vs. realistic art. The inspiration piece was Kandinsky's "Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles" from 1913. They used pastels as their art medium. Some of the kids had trouble choosing what colors to use. The teacher's only suggestions were that they only use small amounts of black and that they should use at least three colors for each square piece.

Many of the other kids colored in their circles more fully with less white from the background showing. That took a while for some of them, because of all of the elbow grease they put into their coloring the circles and background until none of the white was showing. Eric did not have any of those hangups. He colored like he usually colors, not really trying to stay in the lines and not covering up all the white of the paper.

He was definite when he finished. Despite encouragement from the teachers and the other volunteer to color in the white, he didn't feel like he needed to do that at all. I knew from last year that he wants to do his own thing and I won't change his mind--nor do I want to change his mind. The beauty of seeing him in action in his art class is that I can encourage his creativeness. It's not my art project, after all--it's his, and I'm totally fine with that.