Project Description: Picturesque Delight in “Skovhuset” by kindergarten supervisor Nina Nørby These paintings are on loan from the children in the kindergarten “Skovhuset”. It was an unstructured task where they could paint whatever they wanted. Kindergarten supervisor Nina Nørby was responsible for the supervision of the children and describes the process as follows:
Creating images in the “Skovhuset” is an activity that all children enjoy. The children are three to six years old and our approach to children's imagery is that drawing and painting should be taught in the same way that we teach children to build with blocks, dress dolls, play with shields and swords etc.
We use good materials such as watercolor paper, excellent brushes, water-resistant marker pens and ink and oil pastels. To give children a good start in producing images that don’t look like doodles, we may use the following learing process: an adult draws a person on a piece of paper whilst the child then tries to keep up by drawing on his/her own piece of paper. All the details are mentioned: eyes, ears, hair, arms and legs and so on. This first character is the basis for the child's character development and drawing the character will be repeated again and again in the next time frame until the child feels able to draw people.
The child gradually learns different techniques for painting with liquid watercolors. There is one brush in each color, which facilitates the process and the brush is only rinsed at the end. The youngest children get only two or three colors to choose from, while the more experienced user can choose from up to 10 different colors.
Over time the children learn to start with light colors first, such as skin color, yellow etc. This is because you can always add a dark color on top of a light color, but not vice versa. If a child has put too much paint onto the paper, have a piece of kitchen role ready so the excess paint can be dabbed dry and prevented from mixing too much with the other colors.
It is important that the entire paper is filled in with paint. For the large surfaces, which are often the background, use a thick brush to make the process easier. Children are sometimes stopped in the painting process, because they cannot always get a feel for when the paper has had enough color. If they are allowed to continue, the beautiful work they have already painted will be lost because it ends up becoming brown and cloudy. Instead, they get a new piece of paper and can continue painting.
Finally we make a photo conversation. It normally takes place some time after the painting is finished, because many children are tired after having concentrated for such a long time with different techniques. During the conversation the child is asked about details and the conversation is written down word by word. Children love to tell about their pictures and feel that they are taken seriously and that especially their picture is something special.
The picture tells a story that others will enjoy looking at and read.
To give the children a sense of magic, we also use oil pastels. Small patterns - raindrops or flowers – made with the oil pastels, appear in the painting when the liquid watercolor is applied on top. It is especially fun with the white oil pastel, because you can only catch a glimpse of it on the paper before it shines through at full impact when the child begins to paint.