(bright music) - Hello, early learners, and welcome back to The Art Room.

Yesterday, we started our week off by learning about Wassily Kandinsky and his several circles print.

Today we're going to continue with Kandinsky, but we're going to be looking at his squares with concentric circles.

But let's start out with a good morning song.

♪ Hello, nice to see you everyone ♪ ♪ Hello, nice to see you everyone ♪ ♪ Hello to you, hello to you, hello to you, hello to me ♪ ♪ Hello, nice to see you everyone ♪ So today we're going to talk a little bit more about Dot Day International.

That means not just in the United States.

It's happening across in other countries, and it started in 2009 when a school teacher read the book "The Dot" to his class and began to celebrate creativity.

Now, in this book by Peter H. Reynolds is the character Vashti, and Vashti doesn't think that she is an artist.

And when she goes to school and the teacher tries to encourage her to do art, something happens, and we're going to read the book and find out about that.

It's called "The Dot."

And I'm going to move my table up so I can balance the book on there because I want you to see the pictures, and they're drawn so small that I hope that you can see it well enough.

Otherwise, all of the pre-K and TK teachers in Fresno Unified have this book 'cause we bought it for them to share with you, and it's called "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds.

I should show you a picture of Peter H. Reynolds so you know what he looks like.

He's still living, and he does come to different schools but probably not during the time of the pandemic because they don't allow visitors around places.

But here he is writing little notes to people who read "The Dot."

Let's put him back over here, or I'll put him over here so I don't drop him to the ground.

But his book, "The Dot," and here is Vashti painting a dot around the words The Dot.

We know it takes place at school, that's the setting, so let's find out.

Art class was over, but Vashti sat glued to her chair.

Her paper was empty.

Now, an empty paper just looks white, doesn't it?

And her teacher is going to say something about the white paper.

Vashti's teacher leaned over the blank paper.

"Ah!

A polar bear in a snow storm," she said.

"Hmm, very funny!"

said Vashti.

"I can't draw!"

Her teacher just smiled.

"Just make a mark and see where it takes you."

Vashti grabbed a marker and gave her paper a good, strong jab.

"There!"

Her teacher picked up the paper and studied it carefully.

"Hmmmm."

She pushed the paper toward Vashti and quietly said, "Now sign it."

Vashti thought for a moment, "Well, maybe I can't draw, but I can sign my name."

And I made her name big so you could see how she signs it.

And she wrote it at the bottom of that paper with the dot jabbed in the middle.

The next week when Vashti walked into art class, she was surprised to see what was hanging above her teacher's desk.

And I made a copy of it big and colorful so you could see just what was above the teacher's desk: Vashti's art with her name signed at the bottom, and the teacher put a frame around it.

Oh my goodness, what is Vashti going to think about that?

It was the little dot she had drawn, her dot!

All framed in a swirly gold frame!

Look, she crosses her arms and makes that face and said, "Hmph!

I can make better art dot than that."

So she opened her never-before-used set of watercolors and she set to work.

Vashti painted and painted.

A red dot.

A purple dot.

A yellow dot.

A blue dot.

The blue mixed with the yellow.

And she discovered that she could make a green dot.

Vashti kept experimenting.

Lots of little dots in many colors.

"If I can make little dots, I can make big dots, too."

So Vashti splashed her colors with a bigger brush on a bigger paper to make bigger dots.

Vashti even made a dot by not painting a dot.

Look how she used a giant broom as a brush and made strokes all around an empty space and left the space be the dot.

Vashti is clever.

At the school art show a few weeks later, Vashti's many dots made quite a splash.

Every single one of these are Vashti's at the art show, and every one of them is different.

Then Vashti noticed a little boy gazing up at her.

"You're a really great artist.

I wish I could draw," he said.

"Oh, I bet you can," said Vashti.

"Me?

Hmm, no, not me.

I can't draw a straight line with a ruler."

What will Vashti do for this little boy who doesn't think he can even draw a straight line?

So Vashti smiled.

She handed the boy a blank sheet of paper and said, "Show me."

The boy's pencil shook as he drew his line.

Look, she's studying it just like her teacher studied her dot.

Vashti stared at the boy's squiggle and then she said, what do you think Vashti said?

Do you remember what her teacher said to her when she looked at her dot?

She said, "Please sign it."

And that is the end of our story.

And that is the inspiration for International Dot Day, that everyone is an artist, that you just start with what you can do and you make your mark.

They say, "Make your mark on the world, boys and girls."

So that means anything you do, do it well.

And if you have artwork that you love, sign it.

It's a good beginning.

Now, today, we're going to look up at the poster that I brought of Kandinsky's work that we're going to look at today, and here it is.

Look how he made different lines and made them into squares, and each one, he put a dot and surrounded it with another color, surrounded it with another color, surrounded it with another color and another color.

He made concentric circles.

And on this artwork, he was not even intending it to be put in a frame or noticed because it was just him trying out what colors look great next to each other, what does it look like with this background, how should I make this one look?

And that's all he was doing.

And he made his paper, his picture was only this size.

Now, most paintings that we love are big, but this one was just this size.

It's called 9.4 inches by 12.4 inches.

It's almost the size of a regular sheet of paper.

But he did this art and people loved it because it was an abstract study of colors and all of these concentric circles.

Now, the project that we're going to do today, I told you yesterday if you could bring squares of paper.

And I have brought mine and my scissors and my pastels.

Let me move them down here.

I did this with a class at eLearn for a teacher friend of mine, Mrs. Coy, with her first grade class.

They wanted to make these little quilt squares, and they both started out with just a dot, a simple dot, kind of like Vashti's dot.

So what we're going to do is trace our circle template onto the lighter-colored paper.

And I am going to set this on here and use my black marker to trace it around the outside of the paper.

And on my new, I just made a big mark on it by accident, but it's okay 'cause it's just a piece of paper I made in said circle template so no one thought it was their circle.

But here is my circle.

I traced that circle, and now I have a circle of yellow paper.

Now I'm going to cut this out.

And if you have your circle made and you can cut it out, remember your fingers go in the big hole and the thumb in the top hole, and keep your thumb on the top as you cut.

I'm leaving that little black circle on there as much as I can.

I don't wanna cut the color off of there 'cause it will make a good outline for my artwork, and I'll do this.

But we're going to draw another one because this project has many steps.

Now here is my circle.

I might put a piece of white paper here so you can see better 'cause my background is yellow and my paper is yellow, and I think this will make it easier.

I can move my template out of the way, there we go, and my scissors are finished.

This is going to be my background, so I'm just going to set it aside too.

I wanted to show you I made a little frame so that when I look at my artwork and I say, "Oh, do you see that?

Do you see I have made dots and circles around the edge?"

And you can use a little frame to show people.

Say, "Oh, make sure you look at the middle.

It's just plain."

Put this here.

Now I'm going to use my black pen.

I always put the lid at the end so I don't have to hunt for it.

And I'm going to draw a circle inside that circle, and it's going to be concentric, and it's going to be near the edge, and I go a little ways and turn my circle, go a little ways and turn my circle.

I'm doing the best I can.

And if it goes a little wiggly, it's okay.

It will still look great.

Go around the edge.

Now I'm going to put some dots.

So I'm going to circle it and circle it.

I don't want to make them giant because I want to do some other designs on the inside.

So I'm getting close to that, trying not to touch it because I wanna make sure that it has its own space.

Each one of these circles is gonna be colored in to be a dot because a circle is a circle, and then when it's colored in, it becomes a dot.

We still call it a circle, but I like to tell children, "I'll draw a circle, color it in, now it's a dot."

There we go.

I can draw more things.

I like to do this around mine.

You can do anything you'd like.

You could do zigzag lines, or you can do this ocean wave line that I'm going all around.

I'm like making a bump over that dot 'cause I think this makes it kind of look like a kaleidoscope.

And a kaleidoscope has all those colors, and when you twist it, you can see more colors.

Now, in the middle, as much as I can put it in the middle, I'm going to do that and then make two lines out and make it into a fan.

I'm gonna do two lines at a diagonal and make it into a fan.

I'm going to do two lines out and make it into a fan.

I'm gonna do two lines out and make it into a fan.

Oh, there's room for just one more.

Or I could do two skinny ones, but I think I'll do one more here.

Here we go.

Now I have a lot of great designs on here.

I'll put the lid on my pen, and now it's time to color.

Now, since I have yellow paper, I don't want to use yellow as my color.

So I'm going to start out and maybe I'll put every other one a different color.

I'm going to do this one orange.

I'll skip that one and do this one orange.

I'm going every other one.

And you notice I'm going around in a circle rather than side to side and trying to keep my color inside my dot because it is International Dot Day.

Oh, I was lucky.

It came out perfectly.

I think I'll do a light kind of pumpkin orange.

Oh, this is the time of year where people do put their pumpkins out.

I went to look for pumpkins at the store, but I was on my bicycle, and I already bought all my groceries, and it was too heavy to put the pumpkin in the back too, but I'm gonna get a pumpkin and put it on my porch.

Here we go.

I'm going to use white now because white kind of shows up on colored paper that you don't normally think it will show up on white paper.

So I need to peel mine 'cause it broke the last time I used it.

So I just peel a tiny bit of it down.

So it's not peeled completely 'cause the paper does help it from breaking.

I'm going to put this inside my ocean wave.

Does it show up well enough?

Probably not on camera, but in my, right here where I am, it is showing at some.

But I think I'll outline it with blue.

Oh, see, just like I thought, it broke again.

I'm gonna use blue because the blue will make it look like an ocean, and you'll be able to see it better.

Oh, this looks good together 'cause now you really can see the white.

It outlines it and kind of makes it stand out.

If I think when I'm finished that it's not enough, like if I think, "Oh, this isn't enough," I can color it in even after I cut it up.

But it's better to get it all colored now because once you color and cut it up, it becomes part of this little quilty part.

I'm gonna put pink in the middle of this one, and I think I'll try and do some purply magenta on the outside.

Remember how we're thinking, kind of like Kandinsky, what colors look good together?

And I think the magenta does look good next to the pink.

I'm making it look kind of like a flower.

Did you notice that on yours?

Did you make the same kind of shapes that I did?

May get this in here.

Ooh, I love the little space.

I like to get in all the spaces so it all shows up.

I'm doing it carefully back and forth, back and forth.

I like to go one way when I get in there.

First, I like to go around the edges so I don't go out of the line.

There, that looks good.

Now I think I'll put some more dots, but I think I'll use a dark blue.

So if I get this dark blue and I can just make something that I didn't make a black line around, still I can do colors in here.

It does not have to be something I drew first with the black outliner.

But if you like it better that way, you can.

Or you can go back around and circle it around when you are finished.

I think I will take out maybe a brown or a purple and do some wiggly lines on the edge of this.

Wiggle.

Wiggle.

Oh!

Every time it breaks, it surprises me, although I don't know why because it does break easily.

All right, boys and girls, now it's time to fold.

I'm going to move my pastels over, leaving my scissors over there for right now, even though I'm going to use them.

I don't like to move things around when scissors are near me because they're sharp.

But here is my dot, and it's all colored in.

Now my job is to fold it, and I'm going to fold it.

I turn it upside down like this.

Let me move these off of here.

So you can see I am folding it, and I bring the edge to the edge, and I press my fingers across.

Now, we know that we've been using our oil pastels and they do smear when you push against them with your finger.

Now, this is in half.

And I think I will draw with my pencil a line so I can see it later right on that fold 'cause I noticed when I did this with Mrs. Coy's class, I didn't tell people to do this step, and they couldn't see their fold, so I wanted to make sure that you got that.

So I folded it, and I put a line right where the fold was.

Now I'm gonna put it back together, and I'm going to fold it again, putting the edge against the edge and push, push, push, push, push.

And it kind of looks like a piece of pizza.

It's a fourth of the circle 'cause there are four parts.

Let me open it and see if can see the fold line.

Oh, I can.

So I'm going to put my pencil there and draw a line there.

Those are the lines I'm going to cut.

So now, thumb in the top, fingers in the bottom, and I cut on that folded line that I drew the pencil mark on.

And then there's this one too.

One, two.

Three, four.

Now I can bring over my black paper.

I've to get my glue stick out of my bag.

Look, I always have a lot of paper cut so that if I wanna do this project again and again and again, I have all my colored paper and black paper in there.

Get my glue stick ready.

Now let's turn the pieces over.

Do you notice on these pieces there's a curved side and a pointed side?

A curved side and a pointed side, a curved side and a pointed side, a curved side and a pointed side.

I am going to put the point in every corner.

Do you notice I didn't put it this way, I put the point in the corner.

So I'm going to turn it over, my first one, and we know we glue around the edge to make it stick, and I put it, point in the corner and press it down.

I'll take my next one, turn it over, glue stick around the edge, and point in the corner.

There's two.

And since we cut it into quarters, we have four pieces.

I still have two more to go.

Two plus two equals four.

Around the edge, put it in the corner.

If it overlaps a little bit, that's okay.

It still looks great to me.

Gonna get that glue.

I used a little bit too much glue stick on that one.

Around the edge and put it in the corner.

Do you notice now?

I have, my dot art is finished, and it has a really great look about it.

Now, in my other class, some people made theirs into a butterfly.

But if your teacher is going to put 'em together and make into a quilt, you'll want to make sure that you put yours with the points in the corner like this.

And if you put 20 of them together and if you take a picture of yours and send it to me, we can put it up on the bulletin board.

And notice I think we need one more here.

I wonder if I could do it quickly so that it makes of total square if we have time.

I think I would do a blue one 'cause it is easy to see on here, and I'll get my template.

I probably won't be able to get it finished completely, but we'll get to see what that square looks like in their entirety and make it an entire quilt if I put the black there and get ready for it to be put on.

And you notice I moved the yellow from being under here 'cause it did look like it.

Just join together and put it with another color.

So if you could tell someone how did you make that, you say, "Well, first, you trace your circle template in the middle of your square, and you cut it out, and you do the decorations" because when you're doing this with a lot of people, sometimes people need to stop the video and go back and look and see how it's done because they think that they didn't see a part of it.

But that's the great thing about PBS.

They let you take pictures and stop the video whenever you need to.

And I can do my design, and I can go out, out, out.

Doesn't have to be the same as last time.

This one, I'm making it look kind of like a sun, and I can still make the circle around the edge.

Boys and girls, I want to tell you about tomorrow, what we're going to do.

Last year around this time, we studied an artist named Yayoi Kusama, and she's famous because she is the princess of polka dots.

She did all kinds of polka dot art, and recently something sad happened.

Are you ready to hear?

Her giant pumpkin that was near the edge of the ocean got washed out to sea, and that was such a sad thing.

They couldn't even capture it and bring it back.

But tomorrow I need you to bring a piece of construction paper, paint, a pen, paper towels.

If you have that paper that's polka dot paper that you can pop the dots on, bring that and some painting and drawing tools.

Boys and girls, thank you for coming and celebrating International Dot Day with me today with Kandinsky, and be ready for us to learn about Yayoi's flowers tomorrow.

So bring your paint supplies, and I will see you then.

Have a great day.

Learn a lot in school.

Be kind to your teacher.

Happy Dot Day, boys and girls.

Bye-bye.

(bright music)