Soy Arte
This isn’t my typical blog post or art sample. But I had an opportunity this past week to try something new, and I think it’s something many of you could do as well! Whether looking for an activity to keep your kids busy on a snow day, teaching an art unit at school, or planning a workshop for VBS next summer…this lesson can be applied at all age levels and all ranges of artistic ability.
Last week I was in Guatemala with 77 degree weather, sunshine, and volcanoes! The school where I teach takes high-schoolers on a Mission X week each year. For this year’s trip, I went to Antigua, Guatemala with 11 students and 2 other coworkers. My task for the week was to lead a watercolor (aquarelle) workshop for 7 teenage girls at a school there. I didn’t know what to expect but ended up loving the girls and every step of our process! The lighthouse collage above was the end result for me. However, this project really is all about the process. Below are the daily steps if you’re interested or want to try this at home!
Day 1 – Creation
For the first day, we went back to Genesis 1, reading several verses about creation. As God created “a great light to rule the day and lesser lights to rule the night,” we took a 9×12 sheet of watercolor paper and white oil pastels. With the oil pastels, we drew stars and moon (which of course you can’t see…white stars on white paper). Then, using dark washes of blues and purples with black, we made the stars appear!
Next we looked at Psalm 19:1-4, which says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth; their words to the ends of the world.” What a thought! Doesn’t matter where you live or what language you speak, everyone loves when God paints a gorgeous sunset! So, we painted our own sunsets with a wet-on-wet technique. For wet-on-wet, you “paint” the page with clean water, only leaving dry the areas where you want the whitest clouds. Then you tease pinks and oranges into that wet page, letting them swirl and mix, creating a tie-dye effect. To soften the edges of clouds, you can use your finger to smudge where the pink wash meets the white dry space.
Now I asked the girls: what are your favorite parts of creation? They answered with: flowers, animals, trees, mountains, ocean. On a new 9×12 sheet, I demonstrated how to make grass texture using dry-brush technique. You mix greens and yellows on your tray. Then squeeze all excess water out of your brush. It works best with a stiff, coarse brush. Take a small amount of paint and, starting at the bottom of your page, lift up with your strokes. Layering several shades of greens, yellows, and browns gives depth to the scene. Switching to a small round brush, we pulled short lines in a star-shaped pattern to create flowers. Or we clustered dots of color as lupines or lilacs.
We had time for one more painted page, and the girls voted on ocean. With our paper turned horizontally, we used blue oil pastels to draw curved rhythmic lines. Then with a large brush, we pulled long strokes of blues and greens, leaving thin lines of white where we wanted foam or spray to be. Once finished we hung our scenes on a line to dry. Note: don’t hang the wet-on-wet sky scene until it is partially dry…otherwise colors will drip down the page.
Day 2 – Destruction
The curriculum we followed is based on a non-profit organization called Athentikos. Click the link to learn more about their programs! One of Athentikos’ goals is to allow time and space for people to process and heal from difficult or traumatic things they have faced in life. On Day 1 we focused on creation. However, we live in a broken world where not everything is pretty. Day 2 we started with the “ugly” colors. Using only browns, greys, and blacks, I instructed the girls to fill a new 9×12 page. They could use washes, spattering, or harsh texture marks.
While these pages dried, we looked at several passages in the Bible. I had three students from my school helping in the room (Samuel, Annabelle, & Sofia). They took turns reading passages and asking questions that would prompt discussion with the Guatemalan girls. First we looked at Genesis 3 and how sin and brokenness entered the world. Then we read Luke 22:41-44 with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. As he cried out to God, anxious about the cup of wrath coming, we talked about what it feels like to fight with your parents. Jesus had had perfect unity with his Father from before time existed. Now he was about to face abandonment and wrath. We talked about his being betrayed by a friend, Judas. We read Matthew 27:27-31 where Jesus is spat on, beaten, and taunted. Finally, we read Luke 23:32-47. So much happens here! We see Jesus allowing himself to be crucified. We see criminals, one who mocks him and one who believes in him. We hear Jesus forgive those who are crucifying him. We hear Jesus forgive and welcome the one criminal to paradise. We see darkness consume the sky and the curtain of the temple rend as God himself is sad and angry. We see a Roman centurion’s faith as he watches this innocent man die.
Day 2 is as much about discussion as it is about art. Looking at the world’s brokenness and Christ’s willingness to be broken on our behalf, we revisited the brown paintings. Using black Sharpie marker, I instructed the group to add words, drawings, doodles, markings that represent troubles they’ve faced, their fears or failures. Things they’ve done or have been done to them.
The room was quiet for a while as students worked. Afterwards, I asked if anyone was willing to share. A couple girls had tears in their eyes and several flipped their paper over to hide what was written. I shared what was on my page. It had many dark patches and angry marks, including a doodle of a face screaming. In one corner I wrote about my uncle who had struggled with alcohol for many years. I spoke of being angry because I felt he had chosen alcohol over us (family who loved him) and how I was angry enough to kick a concrete wall the day I found out he’d died. As time passed and we understood better everything he’d struggled with and how his death came about, my anger lessened. But I will always miss him and wish he were alive and with us today. The 3 students from my school shared theirs as well. Some responses were as simple as “I’m afraid I won’t fulfill my dreams,” or “I fear I won’t make my parents proud.” Others included lies Satan throws at us like, “You will never be loved,” or “Why are you even here on this earth?”
Fears and past hurts are part of us but shouldn’t control us. So, as we finished sharing, we each took the brown page and tore and crumpled it into pieces. All pieces were thrown into a clean empty waste basket in the middle of the room. This felt very good!…fairly therapeutic!
However, the brokenness of life has affected even the beautiful parts of this world. I asked the girls: “Do you trust me?” They responded with, yes. “Then I’d like you to take all of the beautiful pages of creation you made yesterday, tear them up and throw them in this basket as well.” This was much harder! It’s easy to destroy something that haunts you. It’s not fun to destroy the things you are proud of and worked hard to accomplish. I laughed as I shared that I was starting with my least favorite page from the creation day. We slowly tore up every page until the waste basket was full to the brim. I wrapped up by saying, “Today was a hard day! But don’t worry. Tomorrow is another good day where we’ll make wonderful things again.”
Day 3 – New Creation
Day 2 was hard, and we left Jesus on the cross. But we never want to leave him there for long because we know he rose again! For Day 3 we read Matthew 28:1-10. We talked about how the women felt when they arrived at an empty tomb with an angel guarding it. We talked about how they felt when they met Jesus face to face! And we talked of their response when he asked them to go tell the disciples all that they had seen. Next we read 2 Corinthians 5:17 which declares: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come!” Christ defeating death on the cross meant that all of the brokenness of this world was starting to come undone. We still see and feel the hurt around us. However, we have hope because he is making all things new!
To prepare for today’s art activity, I read Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” to the class. Thankfully, the school in Guatemala had a copy of the book written in Spanish. Paula (my side-kick and awesome interpreter for the week) helped me with pronunciation as I read aloud. I knew the story well enough to know where to put voice inflection. The girls appreciated my efforts and clapped at the end! Note: children’s books aren’t only for children! They can be a wonderfully simple, visual, entertaining learning tool for all ages. “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” was a perfect transition because it’s about making poor decisions, growth, and becoming something new. And the Eric Carle illustration style is exactly what I wanted as examples for our new art creation. I had saved several samples of his work on my phone and showed them to the class.
Now came the fun part! We dumped the waste basket of scraps onto a table. Everyone got to make whatever collage scene they wanted from our pile of scraps. I passed out 12×16 white paper, scissors and glue. Some chose to sketch a basic plan in pencil before starting. And for the rest of Day 3 and part of Day 4, we created! A few girls finished their first scene and made a 2nd one. One of my favorite scenes was Sasha’s “El Gato Y Chimenea.” Her cat loves to climb out on the roof of their house (casa). She had a full moon in the upper left corner with a chimney and the back of her cat sitting next to the chimney looking at the moon. What a clever scene! Her design had pieces of night sky from several of our paintings. And all the dark parts of the chimney and cat were made up of our brown, sadness pages.
That’s what I love most about this activity: the sad and difficult parts get mixed in with the lovely pieces! My lighthouse has angry marks from Samuel’s page and difficult things that Paula has faced. It has stars and sky from several students. Melany’s mountains are made mostly of night skies. Aida’s sunset over water includes flowers in the foreground from 2-3 kids’ dry-brush pages. And Yahaira’s whimsical guitar includes dry-brush grasses for the neck and purple flowers as the decoration on the body of the instrument. Bringing our artwork home, we all got to take pieces of the people we came to know and share time with.
Day 4 – Community
Our final day together was about displaying our work! Family and friends came to see all the dances, worship and artwork that had been created throughout the week. Display doesn’t have to be fancy. We hung our collages on string using clothespins. The girls had fun designing their artist statements, which were taped below the artwork. Many of the girls took time to embellish the page with drawings or borders around their writing. Some were written in English, many in Spanish, and a few translated into both languages. There was much laughter and talking as siblings, parents, grandparents came through to see artwork.
Then we had a large-group presentation where a few of my girls read their artist statement out loud and shared their artwork. Aida was our spokesperson for this presentation. She talked of how nervous or scared they had been on Day 1, coming to work with strangers with unknown expectations. She talked of the watercolor techniques they learned and how fun it was to create beautiful scenes. She described the day of troubles and how it was easy to tear up their troubles. She said it made them sad to tear up the paintings they had worked hard on. Then she shared that the collages they made from the torn pieces were even more beautiful than the original pages had been. I had seen in my short time with her that Aida was a leader who protected those around her. It was a pleasure to watch her speak with confidence, representing her peers in front of a crowd of people!
Final Thoughts
Our group spent about 2 hours each day for this project. However, it could easily be simplified according to the time available and attention-span of your audience. The Bible passages we read through worked well for my teenage group. Choose whatever readings or discussion questions are appropriate for your time.
Most adults draw at the level of a 10-year-old because that is the age when their parents or grandparents stopped encouraging them to draw! Mommy and Daddy will eagerly display little Sally’s artwork on the fridge when she is 5 years old and has an adorable smile with missing teeth. Then Sally hits her teenage years. Her teeth now have braces and the ready smile has been replaced with moody attitude. She may even pretend not to care whether you keep her artwork or throw it away. But if you DO disregard the work she’s done and toss it carelessly in the trash, she’ll remember. You don’t have to keep it forever! But use it as a jumping-off point for discussion to learn a little more about your teen. From the time spent this past week I learned that Merli feels relaxed and refreshed when she is around trees. I learned that Fatima loves cameras because they give her a chance to savor beautiful moments in the world around her. I learned that Japanese Cherry Blossom is one of Samuel’s favorite trees, that Yahaira lives to create music. And I learned that faith is key to everyday life for Paula.
“Soy Arte” translates as “I Am Art!” Steven Curtis Chapman wrote a song years ago with a chorus that says, “I can see the fingerprints of God when I look at you. I can see the fingerprints of God, and I know it’s true: you’re a masterpiece that all creation silently applauds. And you’re covered with the fingerprints of God!”
molliebozarth 
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