Doodle-fest 2010: Romant-Ipp

In which an Ipp offers you a flower. Doodled over breakfast this morning.

From Drawn! - how cute is this??

The Drawn! blog always has just a wealth of cool work by so many people.

They recently found the cutest bit of stuffed toy Japanese ukelele animation.

I mean, what more do you need?? So check it out, and then while you're there check out the rest of the goodies on Drawn!

Love it.

Teaching Kids: More on Brainstorming

Write a post, teach a class, come back and write some more...

I just taught my puppet class in which we are beginning scripts and storyboards for brief scenes -- after having spent a few weeks using up a whole lot of glue and felt and googly eyes.

To start things off I used the prompting method I mentioned in my previous post. I offered up suggestions within categories, and then let the kids run with it.

For example, we talked through the components of a story: a main character, a villain, a problem, a setting, props, sidekicks, narrator, dialog, etc. And then I gave them some sample ideas like comedy, tragedy, disaster/monster, mystery, etc.

Then the kids (who are in 3rd-5th grade) broke up into teams of one or two students and began writing. As they developed their ideas, I helped them work through how something might work with puppets - or where they may need the narrator to explain what is going on or create a piece of scenery or whatnot.

Some of them really got involved with a main character right away, others started with a situation and went from there.

The stories they are creating involve everything from undersea hamburgers to hurricanes to turtle weddings to getting lost inside someone's brain. I can't wait to see how they will come out.

Next time we'll get into storyboards, so they sketch out exactly what's supposed to happen on the stage... and what may not be totally feasible using socks and felt.

But again, as I described before, I offered some general categories as a jumping-off point, something for them to grab on to, and then let them take off from there. It's a fabulous start.

Teaching Kids: How to Brainstorm Ideas

Getting groups of kids to come up with original ideas can be challenging. You don't want to just feed them things that they parrot back to you, but you don't want to feel like an idiot in front of a room full of blank stares and murmuring either.

Here is how to make sure that you get the ideas flowing early and often: Prompt.

Prompting is where you throw out ideas, not because you want the class to use them, but because you want them to open up their thinking.

For example: Suppose you are trying to come up with the main character for a story. It can be anything, but it has to be original.

So, you prompt the class, first with categories of things they could think about. For example, you could say, "This character could be a person, or an animal, or an object..."

Then, you rapidly throw out some examples that fall into those categories. For objects, you could prompt with "appliances," or "furniture," or "farm equipment..."

The students will then begin to throw out their own specific ideas. Very often, those ideas will be based on something from their own life. For example, whenever I work with kids in the mid-morning they seem to come up with lots of ideas that involve food because they are thinking about lunch...

Kids' brains are so lightning-fast, that all you need to is suggest some categories and the ideas will come spilling out. Just give them something to latch on to.

Beware, though: You don't want to throw out ideas that are too specific and make it like a multiple choice test. You just want to rev them up.

And, you don't want to just say, "So, what would be a good main character for our story? It could be anything..." This is where you get the blank stares. Nothing to latch onto.

It takes a little practice, but prompting is really powerful. It opens kids' minds to the possibilities, but lets them then take the lead.

So remember: Pose the problem, then start with broad categories, then offer some examples... and then let 'em run with it.

Did the Egyptians have to Justify their Art?

Do you think that when the Egyptians were creating hieroglyphics and paintings, there were people standing around saying, "I don't know why you're spending time doing that. You're not going to get a real job"?

Or when the Greeks were building the Parthenon, they did that just to kill some time because they didn't have anything "better" to do?

Or when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel, his patrons said, "Well, you need something to do, so you can paint on the ceiling - just don't make a mess"?

How did we get to the point where we feel like we have to justify the arts? People write whole white papers on how music improves math skills because they are trying to justify music in the context of what society seems to "really" value. Things that will get you a "real job."

There's also this idea that the arts are only for people who have "talent." As if making marks and storytelling and moving a pencil around is only good for certain people, those who are going to turn this activity into something "real." Everyone else needs to go get good at pushing paper.

We don't tell people that if they are not Mark Twain they should not write. We know that writing and the expression that it enables is important to being a person.

People with talents benefit society. Really good mathematicians and surgeons and athletes and filmmakers and writers and plumbers and singers and firefighters and public speakers are people we value.

But we've got to stop trying to justify the arts in the context of something else, like reading or math or commerce. Art is how we speak the truth about being human. When we look at ancient civilizations, we look at their art to understand how they saw the world fitting together.

Art isn't something else. It's art. Period.

Coaching Sanctuary - I Believe in You!

I am thrilled to be creating illustrations and cartoons for Coaching Sanctuary, a life coaching site that helps women over 40 examine their goals and make progress toward their dreams. Bettina Jetter, the creator of the project, and Wendy Wallbridge, the coach who is providing the content, are wonderful women with fascinating backgrounds. You can learn more about them, and the project on the Coaching Sanctuary site, here.

Humor has special un-sticking qualities for people's brains. I am pretty sure that the face muscles required to smile are somehow connected to the inside of your head in such a way that if you can smile about a situation, your thoughts can travel around better. I love helping that un-sticking to happen. It's my contribution to the mental health of the world, I guess.

I'm also loving this project because I get to read through and contemplate Wendy's writings and ideas and this is very therapeutic. It's kind of like a life coaching backstage pass. I feel so cool.

So if you or anyone you know would benefit from Coaching Sanctuary, send them on over! It's really cool. And I hear it has good illustrations.

Valentine's. Not just for humans.

Whatever you may think of Valentine's day, it's always fun to think what various animals would give each other as gifts - in California where I live, if you go to a park you see signs warning not to leave items in your car - because bears will just peel it open like a can-opener and help themselves. Anyway, that was the inspiration for this drawing, which you can get on a card for your own favorite animal if you like.