Watercolor Painting, Round 2: Red

So, a follow up to my previous comments about our first foray into the Enki-Waldorf recommended wet on wet watercolor painting... on the first round, which we did in blue, on soaked watercolor papers with the corners rounded off to help encourage a more free form experience rather than painting "things and stuff," DS was definitely trying to paint "something," and when the wetness of the paper and the width of the brush, and the nature of the watercolors kind of prevented that, as intended, I think it bugged him a bit. Eventually, he just filled his paper with blue, though, and relaxed a little, but ended on the note: "yours is better than mine." Definitely not what we're going for with the painting, right?

But, for this endeavor, especially, I want to practice keeping calm, open, and patient. I really have high hopes for it being a practice that softens his edges a bit, and allows him to relax out of his self-conciousness into a dreamier, open state. So, no critiques, evaluative remarks, or instruction, just a soft, quiet voice and modeling a free form experience as best as I know how.

A few days later, we tried red. I read somewhere online in a Waldorf discussion that supposedly a color will invoke the feelings and associations of its opposite in the child. So, if we are painting with red, it will feel more like green for DS. Whichever moods or emotions green might invoke, those will occur when painting with red. (If there's a Waldorf parent or teacher out there reading this, do comment and fill me in if I'm getting this wrong... it was just a brief moment in passing on an article I wandered away from before taking notes.) Since I'm uncertain about this opposite color aspect, it isn't a huge part in my choice of color at this point, but it's an interesting idea I hope to learn more about. And it was in the back of my mind when choosing red next, along with the red imagery in one of the Enki painting stories.

Anyway, during the red watercoloring session, he would loudly, aggressively, and continually state how he was going to make the biggest dot with his red (watching it spread out through the wet of the paper). Again, that competitive mood, and not calm and relaxed, for sure. So, whenever he'd state this, I'd quietly repeat the verse from the story and lightly touch my brush down, slowly, calmly... after a bit, he finally stopped focusing on how to make his dots bigger than mine, and seemed to connect with the calmness of that verse. Aside from trying to make the biggest dot, he didn't appear to try making any other fixed forms. This time he did seem to start getting into just watching the color move through the paper.

Next, we'll try yellow, I guess. I'm curious to see how that goes. Perhaps he'll be getting more and more used to free form wet on wet painting after a few sessions and start to feel more nourished by them. I think I felt improvments with round two, so I expect round three will show more calm and immersion into color. I wonder if there's some method recommended for choosing colors at first? Unless I'm missing it, there's nothing specified in the Enki guides for kindy, so I suppose it's a simple matter of what feels good for that day to me? I wonder if painting orange will help invoke that calm state of blue? I need to research and get more info on this opposite color effect thing... maybe it's to be found in Goethian color theory stuff?

things and stuff... I'm quite a writer tonight, eh?