This drawing by Kieran happened in a completely natural and organic way. He didn't set out to make a drawing of a pirate ship at all. I like to let him do open-ended art, and on this day I set him up with some "art starters"
The first one was using negative shapes: I punched some shapes out of a piece of paper and gave it to him with some markers
He started by drawing around the shapes, than drawing lines between them
Then he noticed that since he was drawing on his big art book, that the punched paper acted as a stencil
So he doodled on a bit on the drawing he created by chance.
He then turned the original punched piece over and continued drawingm this time around the cut-outs.
When he was done, I gave him another starter: a sheet with two squares stuck on
He was totally warmed up by now, and drew and drew
Then he asked if he could have some stickers. I grabbed the first set I found, all about pirates. He started sticking them on, then decided to get the blue marker to colour in the sea.
And that's how we ended up with his latest piece of art!
I love how self-directed this activity was. Apart from providing the starting points, there was no involvement from me. And he will spend lots more time working on open-ended projects like these, than ones where we are working towards creating a specific outcome. That's a win-win for sure!
Want to see some more open-ended kid art? Check out my latest post at Make & Takes
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