Presentation of my art in the 2nd grade of the Lukasschule

Heute hatte ich die wunderbare Möglichkeit, den Kindern einer 2. Klasse in der Lukasschule meine Kunst vorzustellen. Die Lukasschule ist eine christliche Privatschule. Vor 5 Jahren konnte ich hier schonmal das Bilderbuch “Minz und das Geheimnis von Ostern” präsentieren.

I gave the teacher this book during our preparatory talk and she already read it to her pupils beforehand. As they already know my pictures, they kept asking excitedly: "When is the artist finally coming?"

This morning the time had finally come and I spent the whole morning with the children. The teacher was also there, together with an intern. During the devotion time, the story of creation was read, which shows how creative God is and that He loves to talk.

In my presentation and introduction, I first presented the pictures from my early childhood to show the children that I had also started somewhere completely different and that what my art looks like today has developed over the years: In addition to the pictures of my youth, an Asterix comic that I had started when I was a teenager and the 2 books that I had illustrated, as well as my prophetic pictures that finally came into play. I explained that with the prophetic pictures, I first started with fineliners until I finally got creative with colored pencils.

The children were very active and asked endless questions, not only during the time when they were supposed to interview me. Those were really cool questions: What was my first picture, what is my favorite picture, when did I get to know Jesus?

I showed a time-lapse video of the creation of one of my pictures and then told a little more about the background of 3 pictures and how God deeply touched people through these pictures.

Im Austausch mit den Kindern, stachen 2 Bilder besonders heraus, die den Kindern am besten gefallen haben: “Two roads, one decision” (das Bild aus dem Zeitraffervideo) und “Wrapped in the love of God” (eines der Bilder, die ich besonders vorgestellt habe).

After the break we played a game with the children to help them hear God's voice: They should close their eyes and ask God what game He wants to play with them and why. Many pupils spoke about what they had received. But most didn't want to mention the reason. But it was cool to hear about all the games they've got.

Finally, each child was asked to pull a classmate's name from a vessel and ask God what He wants to say to this child and then draw the answer. The children were allowed to choose which materials they would use to do this task. Some used pencil, crayons, watercolors and acrylics on large and small papers. It was really exciting how different their pictures were, how expressive their colors were. Some were hesitant, others went wild with the colors.

Some asked me to help them. I'm afraid that wasn't that helpful to them because they weren't really able to implement it. I also find it very challenging to give children advice without really having the time to go through it step by step. Working with children is still new territory for me and also rather challenging. It was all the cooler that I was able to take advantage of this opportunity.

At the end of the lesson, the children presented their pictures to each other and most of them were able to do something with them. I believe that they found it difficult to really convey a message and to receive it. It was definitely cute when the kids came up with ideas of what the pictures could mean. It was definitely a good start. This can be built on and deepened.

After class, many wanted an autograph. Some wanted it in the "Minz" book, others had a piece of paper… but most just held out the back of their hand so I signed there. Funny!

I was able to sell 5 books, more will follow. But at the end I was totally touched when I opened the envelope that was handed to me as a 'thank you'. In addition to a totally great card, a fee was included that far exceeded my expectations. I was really touched!

A great experience that I would like to repeat 🙂