Soft Pastel Art Class
The outcomes of this workshop were measured by anecdotal responses as well as observations made by staff. The goal of this workshop was not only to teach participants a new skill/art (learning how to use pastel pencils on a black and white photo) but also to engage in conversation about what colors they chose to use on their picture and how each participant see things differently. Participants were given similar pictures to color and in the end all of the pictures looked different.
The beginning of this workshop, the instructor shared a brief history of how this art became popular and how it was first produced followed by directions on how to mix the pastels and how to apply to the picture. The children were then able to look at their pictures and start to color them; the important thing was that the children paint the pictures how they saw them not how anyone else might see them. Some children looked at their pictures for a few minutes before starting to color them with the pastels while others jumped right into it grabbing the pastels and coloring the first thing on the picture. One child actually look at the picture for about 20 minutes before she started to color--she said that the picture was hard to see and it took her brain a while to see the picture (her photo to begin with was a sunset over a lake, she saw the moon rising over the horizon of the earth). As each child worked within their picture differences in each photo began to emerge. The photo of a fish took on blues and oranges from one child and reds and greens from another. The photo of a tree was seen in every season as well as every time of day. It was interesting to see how each child made the same picture look so different. At the end of the session each group of children went to the front of the room to describe their creation.