Encouraging Creativity: Juan's First Digital Work of Art || Mom Life

Art engages children on many different levels as it supports eye-hand coordination, creativity, and visual learning, among other developmental skills. ... When children finger-paint or mold shapes with age-appropriate clay, they build their self-esteem and learn how to find comfort in quiet activities. - http://toosmall.org/

Messy Art

Now I don't know about you but when I think of letting my kid do art, I think of this

And even tho I took those pictures strategically for the mess not to be too obvious (they are old pics from last year) there is a whole mess behind him of crayons thrown all over the floor of his bedroom. So, yeah when I think of letting my kid do art, I think oh this is going to be messy and that is if is just with crayons cause omg if I let him use finger paint that would be a whole disaster that there is not secret on who is going to end up cleaning up all the mess, cause let me tell you I don't know who is messier the dad or the child and they both can live in the mess they have caused and don't be bother to pick anything up.

My kid is only 2years and 10 months so he uses crayons that are made from wax and when I first bough them for him he was around 1 year and a half so he didn’t actually used them to color anything, he just liked to break them in little pieces that are so hard to clean is amazing.

I know how important is for kids to do crafty stuff and all sort of art, and I sacrifice myself for his good development, but then I though well do I need to sacrifice too often or I can encourage his creativity in a less messy way?

Technology to the rescue

Now I know a kid shouldn’t spend too much time in front of a screen but, I do think is important and it helps with their development to learn how to handle from a young age, devices that are going to be in their life forever, all in the extremes is bad so, what we do is we have a schedule and set times of how many hours my kid can be in front of the tv, pc or his tablet.

Since little he learned to play different educational games on my phone and then in his own tablet, a couple of this games are to encourage crafty activities like drawing and coloring inside those apps, but I notice he didn’t find them attractive enough, at least not in either my phone or his tablet. But! Enters the pc/laptop, I obviously use the laptop all day long and he is always curious and wants to touch it and play with it, since is more a work device than a lets let the kid play with it all day kind of laptop, it doesn't have any games installed and since we don't have internet in the house I can let him go online to play anything either, so we go to the old trusted app that has been entertaining kids since its inception.

MS Paint

I though well I can’t let him play randomly in the laptop and risk losing an important file or something in it, I went to open the msp paint app and just took one try to show him how it worked for him to understand it, and I know, I know is not like rocket science and some other kids are faster learning other things but… hey I felt proud as hell of the little kid I produced on my belly.

He loved using it, and what amazed me the most is how much he liked changing colors and just picking them and do different lines in different colors, I'm going to be honest I didn’t teach him how to change brushes and just gave him the pencil one the first time. He ended up doing his first work of digital art, that I now proudly present to you all:

1st digital work of Art of @juancarlosgp (AKA Juan Carlos Guayapero Piedrahita (yes I know a mouthful)) _{(Should I tokenize this as an NFT?)}

He made this one on and I feel like he is not going to stop using or doing messy art with crayons and finger paints but! We have this less messy option that technology provides us with, that not only allows us to take a breath and not think OMG I'm going to have to clean but it also contributes with encouraging the kid’s creativity and his development.

The second time I tried to teach him how to switch brushes in the app but I don't know he was busy being exited about picking what color to use than to listing to me. I still have to choose a brush for him to use and I try to switch it up from time to time so he doesn't ends up doing the exact same paint over and over again, and this has helps me notice how he likes more bigger and that brings more volume to the pain than other brushes.

Art process

I may add that I can’t say ok let’s take a picture because he will immediately stop whatever he is doing to make a pose to the camera.

As you can see here, he actually pics the color himself and if he doesn't see one that he likes in the pre-establish colors he asks me to open the full palette of colors for him to pick. he really doesn’t have a favorite color just yet but he does like the darer tones the most.

Continuing with the Art and evolving

He does like the biggest brushes more and likes to mix colors on top of each other, so here is his latest work of art

He actually likes more coloring in the laptop with ms paint than with real life crayons, and even tho I still encourage he uses the crayons I just let him be creative where ever he wants to be.

How do you encourage your kid’s creativity? Do you allow your kids any screen time? Let me know in the comments!

As always, thank you for reading me, would love to read about your own experience on this, so please leave a comment or better yet, make a post in The Motherhood Community.

_{Picture Credits: All images are of my property unless said otherwise, the emojis are made with Bitmoji.com & Icons with icons8
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