Creative Play: Shape Exploration

Recommended creative playtime: 10-20 minutes; 30+ minutes (you can spend as little or much time on this as you have to spare)

Skill Level: All (it’s always all skill levels!)

Materials needed: sketchbook, pencil, sharpie, oil pastels, scissors, glue stick,  stencils, collage papers. Optional: watercolors, cup for water, and brush.
 
Activity: Draw, cut out, and/or paint any shape varying in size, and create a mixed media work with the layered shapes. You can spend as little as 10 minutes doing this, or longer. The longer that you spend, the more shapes you will create and more layered the work will become.
 
Shapes general fall into two categories: geometric and organic. Geometric shapes are ones that we can identify by a specific name and they often have straight lines (except for ones in the circle fam). Organic shapes are those we cannot specifically identify but they may remind us something we’ve seen before in nature - clouds, leaves, seaweed, kidney beans – just to name a few. These shapes often have rounded features but not always.

While there are a limited amount of geometric shapes, organic shapes are infinite. There are soooo many ways to create interesting and fun organic shapes.
 
You can create shapes using any drawing tool such as your pencil, sharpie, or oil pastels. You can use your watercolor brush, or use your scissors to cut out different shapes.