Authentic Art with Children

When you give children fat brushes and splodgy paint you get splodgy paintings. If this is the only media children are given for art-making how can they express the delicacy of a butterfly wing or the detail of the flower on which it sits? Young children deserve authentic, quality art media to work with. The media artists use are chosen specially for their expressive qualities. It takes time and practice to learn how to use them. The quality of the representation rests upon the artist’s familiarity with the media and a repertoire of skills in their use. However, we know that many educators, not having had experience with art making and authentic art media themselves, do not feel confident doing art with children. This beautifully illustrated book is a practical guide that aims to fill those gaps in an educator’s experiences with art making. As studio practices are unpacked and demonstrated the reader is invited to join in a journey through the same kinds of exploration, experimentation, practice and processes that artists engage in. The author is both artist and educator with over thirty years of experience and research in the arts and early childhood. She takes the reader into the studio and explains and demonstrates how many artists think and work. The reader gets to try ‘being an artist’. Studio practices are then braided with socio, cultural, historical theories to develop a rich set of pedagogical practices for working with young children in the visual arts. This companion book to ‘Drawing to Learn’ brings the theory developed in that book alive. It illustrates and demonstrates just how the theoretical framework outlined in Drawing to Learn can be applied to support young children’s thinking, development and meaning making. Together these two books comprise a resource for students, practitioners and researchers in early childhood that is both inspirational and practical.