Story Telling Through Drawings

Recently, we tried some new art materials – chalk pastels.

At first, this activity was purely about drawing and experimenting. However, it wasn’t long before the boys began story telling through drawings.

The pastels looked so beautiful in the box. As tempting as it was to keep them in the box looking so beautiful, that’s not what art materials are for.

As we hadn’t used these particular pastels before, we started by playing. How could they be used?

What happens when you smudge them with your fingers?

What effect is created when they’re used on their sides? Ends?

The boys had heaps of fun. When it comes to art for children, it’s often about the process rather than the end product. Art is for experimenting and exploring with colour, texture, size, shapes and patterns..

However, it wasn’t long before the activity changed from art only to art plus story telling!

David altered a drawing that I’d started and the story began to grow from there.

A space ship (with many spaceship trailers) was added along with a few aliens and a whole pile of noodles.

This is the end result:

“Once upon a time, there was a planet which had lots of different coloured mountains. It was really windy on the top of the mountain”

(That’s why all the mountains are smudged – in case you’re wondering.)

“On the top of the mountains, there was an alien called Humphalance.”

“Humpalance’s cousins came to visit him.”

“The cousins brought Daniel, David and Mummy with them in a spaceship trailer.”

“Humpalance’s cousins had a long, long, long, long, long trailer full of noodles, noodles, and more noodles.”

There were noodles galore!

“There were oodles of noodles – more than one thousand and ten.”

“The cousins ate all the noodles. They lived on noodles. They ate noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Okay, so the story may not win any literacy awards, but I love the way story telling through drawings allows children to:

• Express and expand their ideas without having to worry about the technicalities of writing the story down. The writing part was Mum’s responsibility as she was the appointed scribe for the day.
• Change the story as they go along. Extra details can be added in or drawings changed.
• Put their ideas on paper through drawings.

For an activity which started out as an art activity, there ended up being a lot of language included. Hooray for art … and imagination … and story telling … and a computer which allows Mum to type the boys’ words quicker than she could write them.

Do you do story telling through drawings? What sort of art materials do you use?

You may also like these activities:

Leaf Creatures

Language Game: What's in the Bag?

Return to the Articles List for other children’s learning activities or children’s book reviews.