Creative Ways to Share Art with Kids: Every Picture Tells a Story

Edgar Degas   The Dance Lesson, c. 1879  National Gallery of Art

Engage Kids with Art: Help Them Find the Story
This concept is a great way to share art with children. As human beings we are hard wired to love stories and actually depend on them for our survival. It's how we share information and cultural values. Degas's The Dance Lesson is full of stories. As a docent at the Maier Museum at Randolph College, helping kids see stories in art is something we do all the time.

Finding the Digital Stories
In developing the app ABC.DC: An Art Alphabet, I selected 26 works of art from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. that are kid-friendly and created an animation for each work. With this piece, I wanted to add delicate lines to show her dancing. This simple animation brings the scene to life and encourages a deeper level of involvement with the image. Does this help you find the story in this painting?

  

Robert Peckham's The Hobby Horse is a slice of 19th century American life children will find amusing and curious. Who are the girls? Who made the hobby horse? What's it like to ride that hobby horse?  My toys don't look anything like that. Some kids may never have seen a hobby horse, especially one like this. The time and place may not interest a preschool child, but what will is imagining the fun of riding such a wonderful wooden horse. This master artwork is courtesy of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

New App in Development: New Workflow

Kristin Reiber Harris
KristinHarrisDesign.com

I am fixating on bird these days; little birds, big birds, silly birds and even realistic birds. My new app project is all about birds. Birds that will make three year olds giggle and hopefully a lot more.  I am combining some of my favorite old and new tools on this project as well as getting back to my roots as an animator.

 

Step One: Textures in Procreate

I start this process of creating a menagerie of birds by developing textures in Procreate on my iPad. I became familiar with Procreate teaching students how to use it working with Demibooks Composer Pro, a development tool for iOS apps. The beauty of Procreate is the artwork is created on the iPad which facilitates import to Composer Pro.

My New Best Friends: An App is Born

I want you to meet a few of my new best friends. I have immersed myself in my first iOS app project which just yesterday became available in the App Store. I have been creating educational media project for kids for many years, but app production is new for me. I had some fits and starts before I found the right production environment for me, Demibooks Composer Studio.

The App

Duck Takes A Ride: An Art Story is a narrative about 8 ancient animals from China and Egypt. I found the images first and the story evolved. I mean really, when you have a gorgeous horse and a cart, something special has to happen.

 

Artist: China, Sichuan province
 1st century/2nd century CE
China: Eastern Han period (25–220 CE)
Portland Art Museum

Why Chinese Bronzes?

I wish I could remember when I fell in love with ancient Chinese bronze sculpture. It's was a long time ago. Thirty years ago I made a ceramic copy of a ding, a ceremonial vessel. Not exactly like the one below, but similar.

Brooklyn Museum   Ding   Cast bronze with inlay China  12th-11th century B.C.E.

I'm not even sure if at the time I really understood what it was. I just knew there was something about the object that captivated me.  As I learned more about ancient Chinese art I discovered a cache of animal bronzes that I knew kids would love.

From the Freer Museum in Washington, DC.

Where are the objects?

I started collecting images of ancient animals from a various museums that allow certain images in their collections available for use in media projects. Some images were put in the public domain while other institutions indicate there are no known copyright restrictions. The Brooklyn Museum, the Portland Art Museum and LACMA collections played a pivitol role in this project.

It was searching the archives of the Brooklyn Museum that I realized I wanted to include animals from ancient Egypt with the Chinese bronzes. What's not to love about this adorable hedgehog?

What Other Animals?

A bixie is an mythical Chinese lion-like animal also known as a chimera. She has wings and apparently was brightly painted at one time. I love her expression and the idea of including a fantasy animal in the menagerie.

This faience monkey "lives" at the Brooklyn Museum. She can do amazing things with her tail, which is almost hidden in the sculpture.

 Stay Tuned to Meet the Rest of the Gang.

Download this app the let me know what you think. Share it with the children in your world.