Rooster - Chinese New Year and Presidents, kids and adults art from children's drawing class, 2/21/17

Class had missed the Chinese New Year rooster session because of the snowstorm that day. I still had materials for it in my bag. I asked class if they wanted to do Presidents Day or Roosters for the New Year. Several wanted the rooster. One child really wanted to do the presidents, (Washington and Lincoln), although only the parents had known what the scheduled subject was to be. I decided we would try to do both!

We did a drawing of one of the simpler papercut designs I had for reference. As usual, the class follows along with me. We start with a border and make some simple marks in this frame/margin area as a kind of warm-up. It goes under the guise of decoration.

As soon as the drawing is done, everyone colors. Most people love to color. A four year old had not been up to trying the drawing. (Neither is that expected.) The child colored mother's drawing with great concentration. I asked the child to maybe try drawing a rooster after the coloring was finished. What a surprise rooster came from that hand. I still cannot believe it.

For the presidents we started with a typical Lincoln silhouette. This is a sacrilegious action for children to accept this kind of drawing process where one is not to do it by outline but by simply coloring in. And they did it by following along with me. Horrors - how could I insist on such a thing! Washington - ok I will draw this one with more lines and you may do it that way too.

Another set of amazing, (I think), portraits they all turned out.

Save my demonstration drawing to print out and color.