I nearly always start children's art classes with color. To me, color is the most important thing to "get" about art.  Line and form are important too, but color, if it's right, can stand on its own and carry a bad composition a long way.  Way down here in South Miami where the sun is bright, color is everywhere.  We have no problem with in-your-face, highly-saturated colors, from art deco peaches and ocean blues to the bright yellow-green of sunlight seen through banana leaves.

Children love rainbows, so that's where we begin.  I help them make a "real" rainbow with colors in their natural order - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. If they haven't already met, I introduce them to Roy G. Biv, the Rainbow Boy, who always knows what colors go next to each other and loves to blend them.  It's most fun to do this with chalk pastels which blend easily by rubbing gently, especially when you can wipe the chalk dust off your fingers onto your "clothes" (I keep old T-shirts to use as smocks).

Then comes the color wheel.  Paula and Sophia each make their own.  I give them identical instructions - three little pots of primary colors, then three little pots of secondary colors arranged just so in a circle - and watch them with amazement as they take their own paths into blending colors.  Colors next to each other in the rainbow or the color wheel will always make a beautiful third color.  Colors opposite each other on the color wheel will brighten each other if they are side-by-side, but make mud if they are combined.  These are the lessons of the first day.

Today there was time left over, so we experimented with abstract brush strokes using colors from the wheel, then color washes - water first, then a drop of paint to spread, then a drop of a related color to blend.  If there is extra water, it's fun to hold the paper up and let it drip!  We'll use these washes as backgrounds for paintings next week.

This was not the day for forms other than circles and arcs, nor was it the day for lines, accurately drawn or otherwise.  This was the day for color!  It was a great beginning.