YAP IX – Collage

The Young Artist Program is up and running again. Since the art studio is in a children’s museum not an art museum the projects aren’t usually inspired by the exhibits. But the current exhibit “The Pigeon Comes to Chicago” is based on the work of children’s book author and illustrator Mo Willems. One component of the exhibit includes videos of a talking head Mo attached to a Mo drawn body instructing children on how to draw his iconic characters. “Drawing,” he says, “is just a bunch of letters and shapes put together in the right order.”

One of Liz’s past Drawing Lab exercises focused on finding the shapes in animals in order to draw them and that became the inspiration for our first project of the year – animal collages.

The collage paper is from a former project a large version of the marble in a box project – balls in kiddie pools! (I wasn’t there for this activity so I really hope we do it again)

Since the resulting pictures look more like the work of Eric Carle than Mo Willems, images from his books hang on the inspiration wall as well.

After they finish their animals everyone gets two googly eyes to “make them come alive” says Liz noting that Walt Disney said he always added the eyes last for that reason.

I always loved art classes in school but I don’t think we ever had drawing lessons (which is why although I was accepted into college as an art major I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to graduate as one) so I never heard about the concept of using shapes to draw until I was a preschool teacher. I was trying to copy a Leo Lionni frog and I wanted him to face the other way but couldn’t figure out how to do it. I asked a teacher who could draw for some help. She pointed to his back legs and said, “You see this triangle here you just need to flip it so it goes the other way.” This triangle? It was eye opening. Liz says that when she created her drawing lab exercises she started by thinking how can I teach those who don’t know how to draw instinctively the techniques that artists use. It is exciting that while the art studio visitors have fun gluing shapes to make animals they are hearing about this important concept.