Black and White - Art in the middle grades

The Waldorf art curriculum is smartly designed to meet children where they’re at in each phase of their development.

If we provide children with the right tools at the right time, the whole experience nourishes them on a deep level.

In the early grades (1-4) students live in a playful artistic realm. The experience of playing with colors and finding basic form is more nourishing than technique and detail.

Students use art as an extension of their imaginations and the stories they hear. Around fifth grade, students are learning about ancient civilizations and how art was used as a method of communication and story telling. From early cave art to the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the mandalas of ancient India, the painting and drawing styles were full of imagery and color. Early art tends to also be fairly two dimensional. It's primary purpose was to tell a story, honor the gods, and represent culture. This is perfect for a child (such as the average 5th grader) who is on the verge of puberty but still lives in the imaginative world of childhood (learn more about fifth grade curriculum here!)

Charcoal drawing is a work in progress- it’s about the process, not the result!

As puberty sets in, the child moves away from the colorful imagery of these ancient peoples into a world of realism and perspective. From the beginnings of civilization and the golden age of Greece the curriculum moves toward the fall of Rome as children enter the 6th grade. Their arrival in Rome begins the next phase of artistic expression.

Teaching art (or any subject!) in the middle school is challenging yet meaningful work.

Students generally are starting to compare their own work with that of others. They are also realizing that they are very different from each other. Each student is on his/her own journey both internally and externally. Most of us remember the battles we faced each day in middle school. The inner struggle to understand how and why the body is changing is contrasted by the outer struggle to find one’s place socially. The child is thrust into a world of polarity. These polarities are often expressed verbally by middle school students. “I HATE my drawing!” “This is SO TOTALLY fun!” “My teacher has NEVER liked me!” “This is the BEST class!”

There may be no better way to meet this moment in their development than to introduce the polarities of black and white drawing along with the multitude of greys that come with studying the nuances of light and dark.

Light and shadow working together!

Students begin to study optics in Physics and using a phenomenological approach are encouraged to look at the world as infinite expressions of light and dark. By learning to see light and shadow and positive/negative space, elements of realism and depth begin to emerge. 6th graders are also generally hungry to learn technique. “It doesn’t look right” is the most common complaint I hear from middle school art students. 

Their ultimate goal is to make their drawing match what they see (either in reality or in their mind’s eye). Learning how to effectively use lines and shading helps the students become better able to draw what they see, as everything we see is based on relationships between light and dark.  Black and white drawing, with it's emphasis on using lights and darks to shade & add depth, is the best way to help them begin to achieve more realism in their art work.

This new skill meets the children perfectly as they are beginning to see their social environment through their own internal polarity lenses. Things are fair or not fair, someone is telling the truth or they are lying. That experience was either the BEST, or the WORST.

Sound familiar?

Emotions tend to run hot and cold at this age. Socially, students tend to feel “in” or “out.” As teachers, we strive to have the experience of the grey scale between light and dark be therapeutic for them, on a deeper unspoken level. While black and white is the main theme at the start of adolescence, the shades of gray in between hint at the next stages of complexity in the development of the human being. As students move beyond the 6th grade towards the end of middle school, vanishing points will expand artistic horizons and bring an entirely new perspective in the grades to come.

~Brian Wolfe

**Looking for some black & white drawing inspiration? We made a Pinterest board for you loaded with resources and ideas!

Lazure Basics - by Charles Andrade

We're excited to have Lazure master Charles Andrade joining us on Waldorfish!

We invited Charles to share the basics of this art form. His work is, in a word, stunning.

What is Lazure?

Win Institute Atrium

Lazure is a decorative paint finish using layers of color wash over white walls that allows the light to pass through and reflect back giving a pure color experience that can have a powerful healing influence. Lazure distinguishes itself from other decorative techniques in that it doesn't rely on "visual texture" (ie: ragging, bagging), but instead, on the atmospheric blushing of analogous colors, offering a calming or dynamic movement of color on the walls that changes tones throughout the day.

Lazure painting was initially created by Rudolf Steiner for the performance hall ceilings of the Goetheanum, which is the headquarters of the international Anthroposophical Society, located in Dornach, Switzerland. He developed Lazure as a means to bringing the most luminous quality of color. Years later, after he had created and developed the Waldorf School movement, Steiner instructed the teachers and parents in how to ensoul the walls of the school with Lazure.

Learn more about color in Waldorf Education

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(Photos left to right: Baltimore Waldorf School, Westside Waldorf School, Michael Park Waldorf school)

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(Photos left to right: meditation room, private residence)

Private residence.

Artist and Lazurist, Charles Andrade has had a life-long fascination with color and painting that has evolved from his initial training in Anthroposophic Art therapy at the Tobias school in England. There, he also learned Lazure, a unique European wall treatment creating healing interior environments. Andrade has owned and operated Lazure Custom Wall Designs for over 25 years – a mural and decorative/faux painting business, specializing in Lazure.

Additionally, he lectures, teaches fine art classes and offers Lazure workshops worldwide.  

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Try a free art lesson, on us!

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Curious about Waldorf-inspired art?

Klimt inspired ...

Brian and I are excited to be curating a changing gallery of chalkdrawings on this 4' x 5' board in a local chiropractors office!

Dr. Lynn loves Gustav Klimt & abstract art - Brian decided to start the series with a piece loosely inspired by Klimt's Tree of Life. We will be changing the drawing out every 6-8 weeks and are thinking about working in the style of a different artist each time.

Van Gogh inspired chalk art up next!

The things that matter...

Let’s play a game.  When I say Waldorf, give me the first word that comes to mind.

Okay? Go.

“Waldorf”

“Astoria”, “salad”, “gnomes,” “beeswax,” “silks,” “Michaelmas,” “watercolors,” “main lesson,” “form drawings.”

And here is my answer: “teenagers.”

So many Waldorf blogs, newsletters, and even school websites focus on the idyllic, peaceful rhythms of early childhood and lower grades curriculum – the pastel silks, the smell of freshly baked bread, the crayon recreations of fables and fairytales.  We hear about the nine-year change, about crossing the midline, about the impact of handwork on development.

Don’t get me wrong, these things matter. 

But, they aren’t the whole; they aren’t the goal;

they are points on the journey.

As our family prepares to graduate our second 8th grader from our local Waldorf school, with the third and final child getting ready for her 5th grade Pentathlon, I’m struck once again about how this pedagogy and dedication comes together.  Waldorf schooling isn’t “for little kids.”  It is for the young adults they will become.

I’m in the process of rounding up volunteers for our school’s annual benefit dinner.  This morning I received a Facebook message (Yes, they do grow up to use technology; try not to panic.) from one of our alumni.  This young woman, a senior in high school, will be heading out on a marine biology research trip the day of the event, but she asked me to please add her to my list – to serve food at the end of what will be a long day.  “I just love being any part of Waldorf events.”

These are the moments that bring the tears to my eyes.  Not the children in sun hats, sprouting from the garden like so many pastel flowers.  Not the chubby fingers painstakingly tracing forms.  The part that gets me is the signs of the adults they are becoming:

That first overnight farm trip in 3rd grade
Hours of strings practice
Climbing Cindercone in Lassen National Park
6th graders helping their second grade reading buddies
Older kids mentoring the younger ones on the basketball court and playground
8th graders welcoming the brand new first graders into the life they love
8th graders using their history lessons – their knowledge of revolutionaries speaking truth to power -- to understand and take agency in life and their community

Teen boys on the basketball court fist-bumping and consoling each other over a missed shot
Graduation speeches in which each graduate in turn refers to their “sibling” and “family”
Alumni returning to the school -- to play in orchestras and ensembles, to coach basketball, to volunteer at festivals, to teach classes.

The divisions in our society are stark these days, rifts that were once blurry seem bottomless and miles wide.  A friend and I were talking as we drove along Texas highways near Austin, in a space where philosophical viewpoints tip on knife edges.  He said, so much of this could be solved in a couple generations if we taught our children empathy in schools.

How could we change the world if we taught our children differently?  If this question sounds familiar to Waldorf families, it should.

In 1917, Otto von Lerchenfeld, a member of the Bavarian State Council in Germany, was in despair over the World War that was taking place.  He decided to ask Rudolf Steiner for his opinion on what it would take to restore order and create a lasting peace. – Gary Lamb, The Social Mission of Waldorf Education

Lamb goes on to recount how this same question plagued Emil Molt, the company director of the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory. “Molt ascribed the terrible events of World War I to a failure in education…”

It was out of this desire to educate the spirits of the young as well as their minds that the Waldorf schools were born.

When my oldest daughter was in 8th grade, her class’s boys’ basketball team made school history.  They did so, not by showcasing the couple of truly outstanding players on the team, but by deciding amongst themselves, to put ego aside and make sure the ball always went to the person who was best positioned to pass or shoot.  13 and 14 year-old boys made the autonomous decision to work for the team rather than for individual glory.

My son and his buddies were in 5th grade at the time, one year away from forming their own team.  They watched every one of those games with shining eyes and told us how they were going to do the same thing when they were in 8th grade. 

Here is the magic. 

A handful of boys from that older team, now juniors in high school, came back this year to coach the younger ones.  And this younger team made school history in their own way and when they didn’t meet their ultimate goal, they, as a group, were their own best therapists.  Even after a bitter loss, there was no blame, no name calling.  Instead, they went to breakfast as a team, joking around, sitting on each others’ laps, hugging and high-fiving.  They knew they were more than their individual disappointment; they were part of an ongoing legacy of respect, teamwork, and empathy.

When the hatred, fear, and intolerance I see in the world makes me want to weep, I think of the teenagers I know, the ones who actively move past their own adolescent angsts to reach out to each other and their communities.  They do this because they have learned to work in groups: to nurture plants, to feed their school and community, to create art, to join their instruments into one song, to support each others’ triumphs and failures.

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Christy Corp-Minamiji is our reluctant muse. A mom of three distinctly divine, loved-by-us kids, she takes everything, and mostly herself, with a grain of salt. Blogging veterinarian, freelance writer, runner, and soon-to-be author, she took our beg and ran with it. Literally.