This art semester, my young students have been pushed; rather than only colorful easier projects, I have been instructing them in harder skills of drawing. On this day we had a little time left at the end of the class and a little paint still on the palette; “couldn’t we pleeeease just paint something for fun? Pleeeease.”
I thought of all the times my greatest breakthroughs have come from just messing around with the colors, so i caved.
They made blues more beautiful than the blue straight from the tube, they learned that a little green added to the blue makes a lovely teal, they learned that you can put different colors on the brush at the same time and if you stop in time it produces a rainbow effect. And they learned that it is exhilarating to make the discovery all on your own.
The quick paintings turned out to be whimsically beautiful.
