Monday was the first day of spring, also called the vernal equinox. It is a national holiday in Japan. On all weekends and national holidays, my oldest son goes to baseball practice from 730am-12 pm. Sometimes I go and participate in the practices. Yesterday I stayed home with my younger son.
Recently, my two sons have been working on making a movie about treasure hunting. My youngest son really wants to put the movie onto a DVD, and make a case. He asked me how the cov
er of his Pinnochio DVD was made. It told him it was a collage of pictures from the movie. So we made a plan to practice collage.
Collage is when you take pictures or parts of pictures and rearrange them into a new picture. One popular way of making collages is by cutting and gluing images from magazines or newspapers.
Today we used an issue of The New Yorker. The only rule I gave myself was that we would not cut and paste hand-drawn illustrations, only photographs.
I explained to my son that he could use a picture or part of a picture, words, or that he could just create a new picture using small pieces to create a mosaic. I demonstrated this by making a circle and filling it with small pieces of torn paper.
It looked a little bit like the Earth to me, but I decided to give the circle rays of light, like sunbeams. Then I decided to put clips of the sky and bubbles in between the sunbeams. Interestingly enough, my family members all had different impressions of my collage. I was told it looked like the sun, the moon, and a black hole by different people.
My son drew a rectangle and filled it with a single rectangle. Then he put a single sweater next to it, and said, "The sweater is holding the newspaper."
We shared a good laugh.
Of course, I thought that he didn't need to draw the rectangle if he was just going to put a rectangular picture on the paper. But I didn't say anything to him for a few reasons. One, I had told him that there are no rules. Two, I didn't want to discourage him. And lastly, he was happy with his image, and I think he made it intentionally.
After making his first collage, he wanted to make the collage for his movie. But, I hadn't prepared any still images from the video we had taken. Then he told me exactly how he wanted to make the collage and asked that I write it down. But I was still working on my own artwork and didn't want to do that.
So, I suggested that he draw a picture of what he wants the DVD cover to look like. He liked that idea, so he made a draft and explained it to me.
Doing art with my children is a fun way to spend some time while actively using our minds.
Rather than watching cartoons or playing video games, it can be fun to make something.
While making art we listened to the Japanese band, Toe. They are a mostly instrumental post-rock band. Sometimes we also listen to Jazz or Classical music. I find that instrumental music creates a nice atmosphere for art. It feels easier to focus on the art with some music on in the background.
Japanese and English vocabulary:
Vernal Equinox - 春分 しゅんぶん Shunbun
春分の日 しゅんぶんのひ Shunbun no hi - Vernal Equinox Day, a national holiday in Japan.
Collage - コラージュ, pronounced like colla-ju
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