Scribble!

I have a young student that comes in for classes every Friday and the first 10 to 15 minutes are spent pouting, sniffling and crying because she is so afraid of doing it WRONG and doesn't trust herself to know what to do.

So.... I today presented a project I have used before....scribbling ....random marks with related colors .... even this baffled her for a bit.

I gave her a surface to work on and a few watercolor pencils (warm colors). We drew a border together with the aid of a straight edge and all four of our hands. I then told her to pick a color and Scribble! She again got teary eyed and said she didn't know what to do ... so I demonstrated for her on a smaller piece of paper and she started in, rotating colors as I called out for her to "switch!"

The thought of drawing Autumn Leaves would have put her over the edge so we traced around the leaves I have pressed in an old phone book. She is light handed with her colors so after  we had traced several to fill the paper in a pleasing way, I had her go over the outline for more pigment.

Then, following my lead, she added small amounts of clean water to the leaf shapes and watched as her scribbles melted into beautiful soft Autumn Colors.

Her time was over before she could complete the background to which she had added more watercolor pencil (cool colors).
Hopefully she will return next Friday with a smile on her face, anticipating the FUN we have ahead of us.