Observing Chairs and Color Mixing

The Friday after-school studio time offers school-age children (6-10 years) an opportunity to explore and create in a studio setting. In the six short weeks of this session we've tried our hands at drawing, painting, collage, color mixing and clay.

The children who had been in the studio before arrived asking to mix colors and use clay. So we have mixed colors and used clay. The students used the colors to paint their drawings and we introduced the idea of "making the colors pop". Observing the contrasts colors can make gives the students another way of using their color knowledge.


We started with blind contour drawings of children's chairs. Without looking at the paper while drawing, the drawings look a bit like puzzle pieces that need to be fit back together.

After the warm-up, we challenged the children to choose a chair and draw it. We asked them to slow down and take the time to carefully look at the object. And we talked about how often we draw the "idea" of a chair (or house or leaf, etc.) without actually looking at the object before us.

M.C. noticed the wood grain. Her observation was shared in the studio setting with the other students thus improving everyone's observations.


Then the painting began. The drawings took on a life of their own with the addition of personally mixed colors.

We encouraged the children to find a background color that "made the chair pop" or contrasted. They love using bold bright colors.