Younger Artists

For the past three weeks we have also been conducting a variety of art activities for children age 7 to 12. 

In the first class, we played a variety of animal sounds, and asked them to draw the creature. They drew good, gestural renditions of birds, owls, cows... but seemed to be in competition to see who could produce the fastest drawing! 

The following week, we had them do a color wheel (in English and Arabic) to familiarize them with the spectrum and color mixing.  Finally, we introduced collage by asking them to create an image of a cat from paper clippings.  

              

One of the cat collages....

Last week, we introduced the art-historic element of traditional Moroccan arabesque designs. We asked the students to recognize the geometry of the design and then color the outline drawings while referencing the English words for dark, light, curved, straight, background, etc. The mother of one student arrived early, and she began work on her own arabesque.