Evolution of Claire’s Art

I’m reading a great book right now by Susan Striker called, “Young at Art.” It’s all about educational and developmental theory behind art experiences for the under 4 crowd. There’s a lot of great (if overwhelming) information in the book, a lot of it geared right towards toddlers. I’m fascinated with her diagrams of the evolution of children’s scribbles and agree with her adamant support of their necessity. Striker also wrote the “anti-coloring book” series so judging by her standards, my drawings of Ray and Daddy that often grace Claire’s artwork (at her request, I swear!) has totally ruined her chances of being the next Picasso…

I think it’s really interesting to see that a year ago Claire’s artwork was really open and swirly.

Claire literally stabbed the color on the page with the brush and ignored the fingerpainting option for the most part. There was lots of white space left on the page and it was definitely more of a kinesthetic paintbrush experience. She started exploring the paint with her hands a few months ago and the resulting picture still looked similar to me.

We've used paint on a couple of different surfaces. Rocks, jeeps and walls (yeah, that last one was unintentional).

Something is definitely changing though. This is what Claire painted a few days ago:

She was so intent on this circular shape (I won’t call it a blob…I think Striker would find it disrespectful, heehee). It started out small and Claire just circled her arm around and around and around. Her work is really starting to fill the page and I see lots of connected lines and enclosed shapes too. It seems we’re entering Claire’s “realism” phase because somewhere in most of these drawings are Grandma Caca’s, snakes, food and lady bugs (well, the lady bugs could be real…there are quite a few buzzing around the house again).

So I’m going to start sharing more of Claire’s creations online here. I love each and every masterpiece but rather then save each one (Striker thinks every, single, sacred piece should be put in a portfolio) I’ll combine the Warldorf philosophy of saving the best of each method/experience and my own stance on photographing everything to show the progression of her skill. Fair? I hope so!

Do you have a drawer full of stashed children’s artwork? How do you store it? I intend to frame some to show Claire she can make “real art” but there are only so many walls in my house. I’m soliciting advice here people, give it freely :-)

or you might just become the recipients of boxes of black swirly masterpieces that I’ll expect to be framed, hey wait, I’m on to something!