You be the Artist – Mary Lee Mattison

Let’s talk about kids and drawing. Art should be fun, non-critical, and accessible to all children regardless of culture or socio-economic status. Art doesn’t require 4-color glossy printing, complicated instructions, expensive supplies, or company. Turn off the T.V. and give a child a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, and they will fire up their own imagination and draw something. Add a box of crayons and a vivid vision emerges as unique and individual as the child! It may not be anything we, as adults, recognize, but the image, and sometimes elaborate story it depicts, are always clear to the artist!

Ask any child old enough to speak, “What are you drawing a picture of?” And they will tell you! It’s not just lines and blobs of color to its maker. It’s personal, sometimes impossible, and always sparkles with imagination. In the immortal words of Julian Lennon, who told his dad John, when asked what he was drawing, “It’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds!” And so it became!

We, as adults, forget how to see beyond basic molecular structure.
All the wonders of childhood are still out there
if you can just remember how to see them.

You be the Artist

Encourages Activity and

celebrates the boundless

possibilities created by

looking at the ordinary

world in new and unusual,

sometimes

downright silly ways.

New England artist

Mary Lee Mattison

inspires children to

explore their creativity

via an outrageous sense of

humor, whimsical

illustrations

and wild imagination.

Mary is known locally as

for giving out free boxes of

crayons and original

drawings to color.

Sample projects for creative kids…

You Be the Artist ~ Art is all about Imagination
Course Outline for 3 classes. (I hour each)

Class 1: Introduction to Imagination. Asking ‘What if…?’
Making name tags that show something unique about the student. Talking about some places the students would like to visit, which can be geographical, historical, or imaginary. And asking ‘What if you could actually go there? Can you picture what it might be like?’ For example: The bottom of the ocean, the planet Mars, the Jurassic time period, the inside of a turtle’s shell?
Activity: An imaginary postcard. Creating a drawing of a place (or several different ones) including a likeness of the student as if they were actually visiting.

Class 2: New Ways to Look at Ordinary Things~
Thinking and talking about the way we look at things and how to consider a brand-new perspective. What if the sky was green and grass was blue?
For example: Consider a bouquet of bubbles, or a forest made completely out of vegetables. Draw a house that has a tiger’s mouth for the front door. How would your school look to you if you were only 10 inches tall?
Activity: Creating drawings depicting some creative ideas for everyday items.

Class 3: Imagine How You Would Look ~
What if you were something completely different than a person? For example: How would you look if you were a giant redwood tree? Or a shooting star? A Butterfly? Or a monster truck?
Activity: Creating drawings that give the student’s features and personality to non-human
creatures and objects.