The school day ends at 3:25 p.m. Tuesdays, but for a group of budding artists at Wilmore-Davis Elementary School, the fun is just getting started.
Clustered around a table in a conference room, students doodle with black markers and munch on granola bars while waiting for their KidzArt class to start.
Instructor Debra Sanders of Wheat Ridge has them begin by squeezing their eyes shut and drawing a tree from memory.
Trunks, branches and leaves take shape on the empty white pages. When Sanders tells the kids to open their eyes, they giggle at what they see.
KidzArt is a nationwide creative art program with franchises in 26 states. Sanders’ business, which she started last May, is one of only three KidzArt franchises in Colorado.
KidzArt provides supplemental art instruction for kids in a non-threatening environment where kids can explore their creativity with no wrong answers, Sanders said. She teaches six classes each week at elementary and middle schools throughout the area.
Today’s lesson is a drawing of a lighthouse on rocky cliffs. Sanders takes the students through the picture line by line, as they recreate the scene on their own papers with careful attention. The drawings don’t have to be perfect, Sanders tells them. Mistakes sometimes turn out to be the best thing on the page, she said.
With the basic drawing finished, Sanders spreads a plethora of colored pencils, markers, pastels and charcoal across the table, and the students get down to business personalizing their pictures. They use professional-quality materials to give their work a sense of importance, Sanders said.
“The only way to learn how to use the materials is to mess around with them,” she said.
Isaiah Jojoya, 9, shades his picture with charcoal. His cousin, Hannah Coronado-Jojola, 9, draws thick grass on the hillside in front of her lighthouse. Haley Young, 11, who is partial to rainbows, uses bright colors. Kaitlin Kiesler, 10, adds a green sea monster and a fire-breathing dragon to her scene.
“She puts dragons on everything,” Sanders said.
This is fitting work for Sanders, a Wheat Ridge native with art degrees from the University of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. She does sculpture, installation art and painting, and teaching the KidzArt classes has energized her work, Sanders said.
“It’s interesting how this is filtering back into my own creativity,” she said.