Talking to Children About Their Art

Questions like these common ones below are not about the appreciation of the product made. If I were showing a friend a bird house I built, for example, I would find it strange to hear…

Can you tell me about it?
How did you do that?
What part did you enjoy the most?
How do you feel when you look at it now?

I would expect a friend to respond on the topic of the bird house, what I am showing him, not begin interviewing me as if it were a podcast.

It’s also true that I used to find it hard to comment upon an abstract painting of a four-year-old. If they said it was a cow, I could look for it and say something relevant, I hope. But apparently random exploration of paint and brush left me with nothing much to say. I continued to want to encourage more art, and be genuinely present. Then I established a course at North Seattle College on Art for Young Children. This would be my opportunity to explore this essential aspect of being human.

As a student of John Dewey I picked up a book my father recommended that Dewey wrote late in his career, Art As Experience. The title itself changed the way I thought about art and children. What children produced with art materials, or any material, really, wasn’t an item or a product or the thing. I ought to think about it as an experience to be lived and savored: it was a communication; it was a message, without words, deeper than words, to be received, and responded to—completing the communication. Art communicates: there it is. It sits there: I, as a receiver, have a responsibility to let it in.

A communication sends me a message, so my role becomes to notice my experience of it and respond factually and subjectively to the work. Instead of the child being my concern, I can look at what is happing right now and respond to its ‘message’ by my experience of the traces of its making and its effect upon me as a person in the audience.

This investment in noticing one’s own encounter with a work of art is called Art Appreciation. When we appreciate art we attend to how art communicates by fully living what happens in looking at it. Art is not so much the product and much more an experience you are now having.

If we wish children to learn that Art is a means of expression, like dancing or music, saying many things in many ways, we leaders of young children ought to craft a way to respond to children’s art so it makes manifest how a painting, as an example, becomes an experience.

Example

I’d like to illustrate with Nathan’s painting from my Art for Young Children course, which concluded by offering four workshops for four-and five-year-olds. Teams of students presented a sequence of drawing, painting, and clay activities to an assigned small group of children. Their job was to document and reflect upon what happened.

Nathan painted this work with his paper flat on a table with small portion cups of yellow, blue, red, white and black tempera in the fashion described at the end of this article.

Nathan asks us to regard the result of his time playing with color and brush. Note: at this one particular moment he can still remember the choices he has made in its evolution. It’s all fresh in his mind.

Nathan, 4 years old

Nathan says, “Look!“

In return he might hear…

Oh, how beautiful.
—a judgment; beauty may not be the child’s intention

Can you tell me about it?
—a press for words that may be hard for many young children when they have been so silently engaged
—a topic shift from his thought, ‘please regard this result’  to the adult’s thought, ‘translate your color and movement decisions into oral language’

You worked really hard at that.
—an oft-heard, casual remark intended to be supportive, but may not be what he cares about right now

Paul Cézanne, 56 years old

In 1895 a visitor stands beside Paul in France, regarding Maison Maria on his easel. In the same manner as above Paul hears this person say…

Oh, comme c’est beau.
Tu peux m’en parler ?
Vous avez travaillé très dur.

Maison Maria with a View of Chateau Noir, 1895

How do you think Paul would respond?

Appreciation

Art appreciation, a fundamental concept in art, describes the obligation of the perceiver when apprehending a work of art. The one encountering the work has a responsibility to engage with it, to absorb and sensitively experience the work with attentiveness to the context of its making. Appreciation unfolds with time: first stop, conjure, and immerse, then open self-awareness of one’s pursuit of this responding—all with regard to the situation and intention of the artist.

Why not bring an appreciation for Cezanne’s work to Nathan as well?

Guides for Regarding Artistic Expression

We can think of authenticity (being genuine and truthful) and integrity (acting in accord with stated values) as two sensible guides for evaluating what we do as leaders of young children. A ‘best way’ can be judged by finding we are being real and truthful as we lead. Each person, in their own way (unlike anyone else on the planet), can appreciate children’s work with art materials especially when the course of creation is still fresh in their minds and especially when those children are between the ages of 2.5 and the age of 6, when they are so free.

Protocol for Responding, below, has power to alter a child’s disposition to choose art again, tomorrow or next week, as they begin to discover another pathway for expression. If a facilitated reflection, as in the protocol below, became an expected part of doing art at school, their facility may steadily grow in painting or drawing, wire or clay. The routine may spread to the way children respond to each other’s work, too.

Protocol for Responding to Children’s Art

A protocol is a a way to be courteous and considerate by following certain procedures and sequences. For example, it is respectful to leave children alone when they are painting and use the opportunity watch their spontaneity and self-confidence pressing on after considering what has been already done.

Painting, as opposed to clay, is an all-consuming sequence of freely chosen physical impulses also made in response to results of one’s own causing. It’s also fascinating to see how expressiveness in clay can continue alongside a casual conversation, which doesn’t seem to be the case for painting.

When a work is completed, we can extend the courtesy to regard what they have done in an intentional way. When the work is fresh in their mind, it’s kind to ensure we respond with our own Art Appreciation.

Appreciation One Two Three

1. Stopping—Becoming Available

I pause, wait, and listen first, keeping my impulse to say something under control. It usually takes 10 seconds for my whirring thoughts to stop and begin to pay attention. I tell myself to stay silent, counting slowly to 10. I then start looking closely at the work, taking it in. I want to be empathetically available. Right here. Right now.

2. Hearing—Tuning into the Person

Having a pleasant conversation is not necessarily the focus for this moment. Now is time for this work of artistic expression and the artist. If the child wants to say something, I will find out by waiting. Usually it takes anyone at least 10 to 15 seconds to transition from the non-verbal intensity of painting to finding thoughts to share. If the child says nothing, you still have communicated a closeness and an interest.

If the child does say something, I recommend what I call the Responding Convention, which I discussed in other contexts: Best Practices in College Teaching, Responsiveness, Active Listening.

These responses maximize the possibility for further communication.

1. Paraphrase

I restate the child’s underlying message, confirming I understand what they mean by trying to say the same thing from my point of view using totally different words. I want to check we have communication: sending—receiving—confirmation.
Nathan: Look! Tom: You want me to see.
Nathan: I’m done. Tom: Ready to move on.

2. Parallel Personal Comment

As an alternative or a subsequent step I can reply with something from my own experience that exactly corresponds. I must match the topic exactly.
Nathan: It’s a cave. Tom: It looks dark in there.
Nathan: It’s a cave. Tom: I’d be scared.

3. Responding—Listening to the Work

Two parts here, also. First, objective comments that focus on those aspects of the media that can be regarded and, second, sharing a personal, subjective experience of how the painting speaks to me directly, in the way art does. I find it is worth spending the time to attend to the work, really feeling it, before talking about it to the child. I use these guides as topics for a response.

1. Objective Comments

Painting has its technical side, manipulable aspects of paint, brush, and paper seen in the traces of application and the final result. (Clay has another set of qualities to regard, wire still another. All media are different.)

In no particular order:

Brushwork: quality of line, weight, texture, direction, fullness/dryness of the brush, energy conveyed in movement.

Color: fully descriptive names for colors as they can be found in nature, how color balances on the page, the ways colors interact (blending, overpainting, and mixing), receding colors, advancing colors, complementary colors, tints, shades, colored grays and browns we see in life versus the colors in the paint containers.

Mass: use of space on the page, relationships of spaces, relative sizes, balance, negative space, the travel of one’s eye

2. Subjective Comments

As in other pages at this site, I use the word subjective to mean I am the subject in the sentence. Sharing my experience while regarding art communicates how art relates to our inner selves. We have here an opportunity to convey a sense of the impact of the work as seen by a sensitive observer. No need to go overboard; ideally these can be brief while being deeply honest.

Personal associations: what immediately comes to mind, first thoughts, “Reminds me of…”

Personal experience: attending to one’s emotions as if personally immersed in it and then describing one’s feelings, describing an experience where that same feeling was created.

Below are protocol examples applied to Nathan’s painting.

1. Objective Comments

comments about brushwork

I can see how you moved the brush differently in different areas of the painting.

You spread the blue evenly, so smooth you can’t see brush strokes, so the color is what matters.

Around the edges, the brushwork energy is more noticeable than the color.

The brush strokes in the dark areas are bold and slow.

These drip lines and dots jump at you, because they are overpainted; they stay on top.

comments about color

I see the colors of green apples and the colors of clouds.

The deep blue of unmixed color right from the cup dominates the painting.

Those dots of yellow come forward like lights.

The blue color looks like it is behind everything, as if it were a hole we are looking through.

Where you brushed a little white paint into the blue, the colors blended; in blending, you can still see both the white and the blue.

Where the blue and white mixed (top right), you don’t see the white anymore.

The white tinted the blue; that’s what the word “tint‘ means: the same blue hue remains, but it’s lighter.

Where yellow mixed into the black, no yellow remained. A little bit of black powers over all of the other colors.

Black is strong; yellow is weak.

Adding a little black made a shade of blue, like it was seen at night.

I can understand how this muddy brown was made with yellow and black, but I have no idea where the rust color came from.

comments about mass

The page is filled entirely; the colors go right to the edge of the paper.

The white drip line connects one side of the painting to the other, like a string tying a package.

We see four main areas: the white center dot, the dark tumbling middle, the sea of blue around, and the edge frame of lighter mixtures.

2. Subjective Comments

These are best when brief. The intent is to convey how a viewer is affected by the work.

personal associations

“It reminds me of riding a bicycle on a sunny day: everything is beautiful then crash! Ouch. I hurt, but I get back on and ride. It’s so fun.

personal experience

“It makes me feel like something bad is going on. I’m happy, really, but I’m edgy. I know something is wrong.”

“It’s like feeling hungry!”

Here’s an example from the Examples of Learning Stories page from the Jolene materials shows this convention applied to her painting. Note how brief the comments are. It’s not an art lecture.

Tempera Paint

Here are Jolene’s easel painting and Nathan’s table painting side by side. Note the differences.

One difference to note is the way up and down brushwork is natural on an easel (left), because the paint is below the painting. In table painting the paint is at the top on the dominant side.

Another difference is the quality of the paint. Jolene was using a kind of tempera that is washable and comes in premixed colors. Nathan was using a premium tempera from a major online supplier. Note how the depth of the color in Nathan’s retains its vibrancy when dry. Note, too, that the paint Jolene was using does not blend or mix; when one color goes over another it stays on top and no new color is created like Nathan’s apple greens and deep browns.

I like to provide children tools that work. Paint brushes hold enough paint for a long line. Color that excites the eye. Paper that is weighty enough to carry a thick coat of paint. Great art materials attract children back another day to experience that same excitement.

I think the work that preschool children do with tempera paint might be the most creative works of art they make in their lives. Strong and lively results invigorate that presence. Children this age have both the physical ability and the unfettered freedom to flow with what comes to mind.

In the beginning children tend to explore the medium and its properties, trying to figure out what it does, but as they become intentional in action, trying to make particular things happen, the scientist becomes an artist. (An example of ‘scientist’ might be the image below, where the child appears to be drawing with the brush.)

Art at this age is magical. Great materials enable children to discover what they can invent with a precious immediacy that can startle the mind—theirs and ours.

Presentation of Tempera

2 oz portion cups so impure leftovers, like the yellow, can be discarded;
choice of two brushes, long handle or short handle;
a tray to carry these awkward bits and, possibly, a mixing palette if the tray were white;
red, yellow, blue primaries for color, and white and black for tints and shades;
(cyan, magenta, and yellow as the primary triad might mix better, like in printing, but I haven’t found cyan paint; turquoise doesn’t work.)

Exercises for Protocol Practice

Objective qualities: brushwork, color, mass
Subjective comments: associations, emotional experience

1

2

3

4

liquid watercolor
0.5 oz portion containers with a very small amount of liquid watercolor
cut down sheets of 140 lb. student grade watercolor paper
one taped to back of a tray and another taped to the front
children start with the front side and turn it over to paint the back paper
container of water
brushes #0 and #2