A Start with Art: Amate Cut Paper

Sean has hit a real sensitive period for art. I don't know about other kids, but he has loved it for years, and seemed to become really compelled to draw when he was nine.

He draws on his own each day. His work plan always includes art, and I allow him to work on art for as long as he desires, as long as he is also completing other work on his plan. He is usually content to draw for 30 minutes to an hour, but rarely more than that.

While I am fine with him doing his own thing, I decided that he could benefit from some different art experience.  I pulled out a gift that I gave him for Christmas last year that we had never used. It's an art canister with instructions on how to create Amate art. It comes with papers, glue stick, scissors, everything you need to create these wonderful images.

It was our first time, so I wasn't very good at instructing, but we figured it out on our own and learned from a couple of mistakes.

Amate art is a Mexican artform. It is usually done with bark, but we used brown paper that looks kind of like bark. Our instructions called for making a mirror image. We folded the paper in half, drew half of our image and cut it out. When it was unfolded, a mirror image was created.

We made some mistakes, and that is how we learn.

The next one will be better, I'm sure.