The latest Community Canvas is complete! A few weeks ago I took a “downtown” themed community canvas to Minot’s end of summer block party in downtown Minot. I’d been asked to bring it to the street festival for kids to paint on as they strolled between games and activities.
As, you can imagine, I was a little nervous when I arrived and discovered that my fellow children’s activity vendors included face painting, a bouncy house and games that gave away real prizes. After I set up and several parent’s asked it I painted faces {to which I had to say “no”} I figured the canvas would be a giant dud.
However, to my pleasant surprise, as soon as I started filling in a few spaces on my own, droves of kids started showing up, wanting to paint as well. It was a steady stream of kids for two hours straight! Sometimes there were more kids wanting to paint than brushes! The community canvas turned out to be a big hit. Crazy, I know. I had so much fun. Even the tiniest artists worked hard to stay in the lines and use the right color. Only one {who I’ll call an abstract artist} went totally rogue as you can see by the yellow streak in the red door.
I guess, it just goes to show that kids are attracted to creativity. Their little hands want to create and be creative. As grown ups, I think we should try our best to let them do that as much as they can.
So here is how the canvas progressed. Start to finish. First the outlined painting that I showed you earlier.
This is what I brought home from the block party.
When I bring it home I basically just retrace the black outlines. In this case I added a few other details as well, like bricks, window glare and cloud color.
As of now, this painting still doesn’t have a home. So, if you are in the Minot area and know of a business or nonprofit that would like to have a Minot-inspired art piece…created by the children of Minot–get in touch. I’d be happy to let you have it. It doesn’t exactly match my personal decor in my home.
I feel so super blessed by the opportunities the Minot art community has given me lately. At the end of this month I’ll be doing another Community Canvas, but this time it’s actually a “Classroom Canvas”! I’ll be drawing up an owl themed canvas for a first grade classroom to paint. It’s going to be fun times a million.
Amy
