Teaching Painting to Children and Adults

Ninads kidsArt painting lessons.  Japan, mixed ages, 6 to 12

Music is a resonance through sound that attracts our sensibility to our physical, mental and spiritual being. Painting is the same, attracting our sensibility through sight. All Art forms transcend the limitations of literal time and space, they represent a poetry that inhabits and surrounds reality. Teaching painting is not pointing out reality, but more profoundly to open the sensibility to that poetry through the innate intelligence and creative power of a student. In actuality, teaching is less about adding something but more about removing the conditioning we have been burdened with. Everything can be reduced to the energy that animates it. Architecture, Music, Painting, Dance have meaning less in the details but more in the abstract physical and spiritual elements that construct them. In painting we work with light and dark, warm and cool,  color, line, space, form, formless, mystery, idea and vision but most important, trust in one’s own insight and the freedom to express it. It is through our spirit that Art is given the power to inspire and nourish. It is that spirit we want to awaken. Ninad

Ninads KidsArt painting lessons.  ages 3 to 6

KidsArt paintings 

 Ages 3 to 12 

Tempera on paper.  Zafiria age 3

Tempera on paper.  Lulu age 3

Calligraphy inks on paper.  Age 6


 

Watercolor on paper.  Age 7

 

Painted cardboard construction relief. Age 8

                Acrylic on paper.  Age 7

Painted cardboard construction relief.  Age 6

 

Tempera on paper.  Lillykai Age 3

Calligraphy inks on paper.  Age 7

Cardboard construction relief, painted with acrylics. age 8

Group painting, drawing on paper 6' x 8'  Ages 5 to 10

Calligraphy ink on paper. age 8

Painted construction, found materials. Age 9

Cardboard construction relief, painted with acrylics. Age 6

Painted cardboard.  Age 6

 Cardboard construction relief, painted with acrylics. Age 6




Please follow the kidsArt blog as there will be more posts about their painting, clay, construction and crafts lessons. Ninad

Painting lessons

| see in the menu or below this post for painting lesson details |

Ninad KidsArt in Japan. creating with kitchen objects and then painting it.

INTERFERING WITH A CHILD'S FREEDOM

 

A child’s creativity is it’s own and flows from his or her inner will. We cannot teach creativity. We can create a space that allows a child to be creative but when we show them how to do something we are interfering in their freedom and stealing that spark and thrill of creating something. Many parents do this unconsciously, showing their children how to do things, even forcing them against their will. It takes some courage and understanding to leave children alone to discover themselves and the world and it takes maturity from a parent to want the child to be free and creative. Often parents don’t want this, rather they demand obedience. They are afraid of the resistance and rebellion of the child. And in reality it is most often fear about their own image in the eyes of other adults and thus their need to express power over their children. In a deep way creativity needs rebellion because the  power to create grows out of our freedom as an individual to step out of established ways. Children resist with their totality precisely because they are still total beings not yet fragmented and torn apart by societies inhibition, fears, confusion and separation of  body, mind and spirit. Our intelligence is greatest when we are children because it interprets the world with its own unique perception, it is untainted, fearless and utterly creative without past and future. There is no creativity without intelligence and intelligence is not what we learn from others, that is knowledge. Creativity is our own uniqueness, the discovery of who we are. Children find their own way, we need to trust them and step out of their path, protect them but nourish their freedom. The greatest obstacle to this is our own possessiveness and inability to see our own immature needs.

THE ORIGIN OF GRAFFITI

Every baby is a street artist. The street through the living room, down the hall, into the bedroom the kitchen is routinely vandalized until the age of submission to authority. Then hands tied they become imprisoned behind inner bars of inhibition. Vandalism is defined as, “The ruthless destruction of anything beautiful or venerable” and that is precisely the joy of a small child. But given freedom from our adult prejudice, clinging and possessiveness there lies an immense lesson that would benefit our life and the healthy growth of our child’s free and creative spirit. If children are allowed and given the space to create, destroy and recreate we would have an infinitely saner society filled with infinitely more beauty and less violence. So here are our inside street artists at work on a collective urban graffiti.

My kids classes in Japan. They are painting on a huge paper canvas about 7' by 8'

         A collective work, their painting blends and mixes producing beautiful and surprising results
and they learn to work together in harmony.

Sometimes hands are the best brushes.

We had stools so they could paint at the top.

Many sized brushes so they can paint rough and delicate lines.

Check out her concentration ! 100% absorbed. They became absolutely silent, painting on top of each other yet totally immersed in their own painting. That's meditation through creativity.

There are many ways to hold and move a brush depending on what you feel and we try to encourage any kind of innovation.

This is only a detail of the huge painting and look how rich and alive it is, full of variation, power and transparency.

Another detail full of action and spontaneity.

I discovered if let free the kids rarely wanted to paint realistic objects but naturally gravitated to the fun of creating their own
play of color, line and movement.  To me this is a profoundly important first step in their creativity, to discover first the joy and freedom of painting and later the disciplines.

Watching, respecting and allowing a child to create from their own silence and being is a miraculous experience.

I think, in the beginning was not the word ! but was the stroke, the movement of life and creation and the word followed saying, AH

Beginning within, our center is there from birth and that center is our own silence telling us who we are and from there we become creators.

It's true !

This painting grew and grew and kept changing.

These were acrylic paints and would dry quickly so children could paint over and over and yet retain much of the under-painting

Art is a very ancient thing. Just the voice expressing a feeling and song happened or hitting two pieces of wood together and music was born. Then perhaps flowers or earth were rubbed on a stone or wood surface and painting appeared. Art is a reflection of our encounter with nature and all of life. It shows who we are and to what depth or height we have gone.

This part is magical, it has many layers we can see through and depth that is like nature but also a metaphor of our ability to intuit the infinite nuances of spirit.

This part is absolutely mythological, like an ancient language evolved out of natures forms, universal archetypes and symbols felt intuitively through painting.

Amazing, because a first look seems like something abstract, undefined, but looking longer we suddenly realize it is pure nature with it's dark and lights, contrasts, muted color and shades, sharp and soft lines, entwined growth, depth, liquidity and the endless flow of expansion that nature gives us.

They were delighted with it and didn't want to stop adding more.

Kids Art in Japan

THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Kids love to paint. In fact they paint with everything they touch. Food, liquids, objects, anything that can be swooshed around. Painting is very primitive, just scratching on stone was an essential baptism anointing us to nature and affirming our individual creative stamp in the universe. Creativity in any form is a mark that we are here with our intelligence. Of course kids just do it, though the wonder is they are not doing it, that is the beauty and freedom of a child painting, they are not thinking about it. We should not teach them to say cheese but rather allow them to be authentic. So as caretakers we are entrusted to protect that grace for as long as they can keep it and they can keep it for the whole life. In Japan during cherry blossom season the trees are overflowing with luscious pink blossoms. There are young trees and very old ones with their gnarled, twisted and broken branches supported with wood crutches. Yet, clustered around the green stems springing out of those old gnarled branches are full blossoms as beautiful as in any young tree.  So here we are in Japan between 1996 and 2006 in Kamakura the ancient capital of Japan during the samurai period. I was teaching English and painting to adults and children in my tiny prewar, wood, tatami, sliding paper doors apt. during hot humid summers and freezing snow cold winters. But then here are the children, watch them, they are totally absorbed painting, can you see in their faces any multitasking. We could achieve the same with years of yoga and meditation. We always ask “how old are you” rather than “how young are you”. Ninad


        Painting the Christmas Tree

WE MADE THIS TREE WITH 3/16 PLYWOOD AND COATED IT WITH GESSO.

THE KIDS USED ACRYLICS TO PAINT ORNAMENTS OR ANYTHING THEY WANTED.

THE TREE WAS ABOUT 7' TALL WITH TRIANGLE BRANCHES FROM 4' ON THE BOTTOM TO 1' ON THE TOP.

THEY GET SO ABSORBED PAINTING THAT HOURS PASS UNNOTICED.

BEAUTY PAINTS AS BEAUTY IS, PURE AND INNOCENT.

JAPANESE KIDS ARE BY NATURE MEDITATIVE SO HAVE A NATURAL INTUITIVE SENSE OF DESIGN

THE INSIDE CORNERS WERE FUN TO PAINT, CREATING A 2 DIMENSIONAL REFLECTIVE SPACE.

THE KIDS LEARNED TO PAINT UP CLOSE AND STEP  BACK TO SENSE THE WHOLE COMPOSITION.

THE GOAL ISN'T ALWAYS THE PAINTING,  BUT WHAT YOU DISCOVER WHILE DOING IT.

WHO WANTS TO PAINT ONLY FINGERNAILS ?

THE TREE KEPT GROWING AND THROUGH ALL THE SEASONS.

EVERY STORY NEEDS A MONSTER