Where are Ours? Making Tracks 2013 Wooden Blocks

"Where are ours?" one of the Tracks asked as they were playing with our growing collection of painted blocks (see 2012 and 2013 blocks).

You can still see the names written on most of them. These Tracks children could see a sister or brother's names, as well as a collection of mysterious and now much-older (in their perception) children.

So, since the question was asked, I went into the basement to find out if we had 18 of the same wooden blocks (we buy them whenever we find them at yard sales or thrift shops). Things were looking tough, but we finally found matching ones, but these are the double unit blocks, so they would have to be working on them for awhile!

These children are experts with the oil pastels and off they went to cover their blocks! There will be another layer of watercolors. The watercolor will provide both a tint for the wood still showing between the lines of oil pastel and an additional finish layer before I paint them with varnish. Stay tuned for the final, final version!

The 2012 and 2013 painted blocks all together to make a lion house.

Wooden Blocks

Last year the children painted wooden blocks referencing Hundertwasser. Those blocks had windows and doors.

This year, they painted blocks inspired by Kokeshi dolls -- not in terms of shape, but in terms of message. This doll holds a message or a story. The main reason for this is because I only had rectangular blocks available and Kokeshi dolls are made on a wood lathe (all curves). So to get to the story part, we hid the doll layer beneath shadow lines of black tempera. Now you can only see hints of the story the blocks held. This may not make sense, in fact, I thought the children would lose the original thread of the discussion, "This is a..." but many of them didn't.

They wanted the blue painters' tape placed just so in order to either hide or reveal key pieces of their blocks, a face here, or color blending there. Each block holds a story. The stories are recorded and the blocks will stay at school for future building projects. The "Kokeshi" block stories will have new chapters written each year.