None of us knew that teenagers aren't allowed to buy spray paint anymore. What's the world coming to? George had some errands to run, and Ray went along for the express purpose of buying spray-paint. Its not like its a secret or something - he'll probably ask for help making more stencils in the next day or so. They wouldn't sell any to him. Apparently there's a big fuss over kids using it as an inhalant and someone has decided that if they're going to be doing something that dangerous they can just buy meth and get it over with.George rolled his eyes and paid for the paint. He said it took a lot of self-control not to ask for a couple extra plastic bags.
Anyway, here's a look at Ray "doing art". Yes, he is spray painting a pair of jeans, and that's Mo in the background, who has just painted her face, although with tempera. It was a big paint-day here. In the learning plan, I have "Emphasis on visual arts as a means of personal expression with regard to real world political, social and legal issues". Ray accomplishes this mainly via spray paint. The shopping trip was a great example of how real world issues intersect with real world artists - I couldn't design a curriculum that effective! We've also had some great discussions of copyright law and intellectual property rights as a result of looking up possible stencil designs.
He's learned to make stencils and use them effectively, and coming to understand background and foreground, positive and negative space. He is experimenting with layering and fade effects and so learning to manipulate the variables of his medium. He's learning about cost-effectiveness wrt different materials and in time he's going to realize that he's learning about ratios. And he's enjoying himself. That's often not one of the priorities of "education" but its a fairly significant one in autodidacticism.
