March is a month full of changes. Weather patterns change from winter to the first signs of spring, time changes during Daylight Savings Time, and our focus in school often changes from thinking that we are just beginning this journey through another semester to thinking about finishing up in the next few months. This month I'd like to share a very special Blog review. It is the story of how one young man's attitude about what he could accomplish in art changed dramatically and his mother captured it in pictures. This young man's experience is why I continue to write. I LOVE it when attitudes change from "I can't" to "I can" Please visit her newly posted blog here: Tina Shares her Son's Experience.

If you need art materials, save big (up to 25%) this weekend at Blick Art Materials. Find information at the bottom of this newsletter. Have a great month!

  

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun." This quote by Mary Lou Cook, a Santa Fe, NM resident, author and co-author of books on artistry and creativity, defines creativity as not one thing, but something that has many components. As your children are engaged in the creative process they find themselves naturally involved in inventing, experimenting, taking risks, making mistakes and hopefully having fun.  Inventing involves imagination and results in coming up with new ideas. Experimenting involves trying those ideas out and doing things that may or may not work, which includes taking risks and making mistakes (though I personally never refer to the surprises in art as mistakes). Growing is a gradual process that includes all those things as a part of moving forward into new areas, with the experiences of the past to support your knowledge and progression. Breaking rules may be one of the hardest ideas to include in creativity, but in light of the recent past century, breaking the old rules was the thing that got artists attention from the public. It was the thing that brought us the beautiful paintings by the Impressionists and modern painters. Today so many rules have been broken that we all feel a desire to find and use some rules again. Rules like how to use tinting and shading in a work of art or how the color wheel works can help our art look better. So learning the rules is very important, but your children should never feel confined by them if they conflict with the direction they want to go in a particular drawing or painting. Finally, fun is a component of creativity because we are allowed to show something of ourselves in a process that we have control of. This is the thing children seem to love best. When children learn to express creativity in the area of the arts, that way of thinking soon spreads to other areas of activity. Creative thinkers are the ones that come up with solutions to real problems. Couldn't we all use more creative thought in our lives?