I am often introducing new media in order to extend a child's thinking or just broaden their creative vocabulary and experience. G. arrived in studio, as she usually does, with a huge smile. She sat down and immediately began to draw with a 6B pencil on Bristol Board. When she was finished I offered to show her a new media, inktense drawing pencils. Inktense are cool, they draw like a colored pencil, they blend with water like water color pencils and they dry like ink, so you can layer colors without losing the underlying affect. G. was eager to experiment.
When she finished she held up her completed piece and told me about it, "It's an Ear Monster! Imagine what you could hear Angelina with all them ears. You could hear children everywhere, laughing".
My heart melted. Children are so wise and poetic. They find beauty everywhere. Why? Because they look for it. I had arrived at school feeling weighted down by human suffering and beleaguered by constant rain and a forecast for more of the same. G. reminded me that we hear what we listen for. We see what we look for. Of course her monster, with all those ears, hears the sound of laughter. And here I was just offering a lesson with inktense colored pencils, in turn I received a lesson in listening and a reminder to tune my ear toward the beauty and laughter all around.
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