Making small toys from clay and creating colours by mixing one or more colours is fun. There would have been many moments when you were doodling and accidently created something so great that you wondered about your hidden potential. Yes, these are the attributes of an artist in his/her budding days.

So for all budding artist out there, let’s explore I Am An Artist — a site that allows you to explore the visual arts with a range of materials and tools.

The interesting thing about the website is its interface, which is entirely animated and you will love to see all the art material scattered around animate when you hover your mouse over it. You can find the main menu on top with categories such as ‘Paints and Colours’, ‘Clay’, ‘Fabric and Fibre’, ‘Drawing’, ‘Construction’ and ‘Print’. As the categories are self-explanatory, you can explore each by clicking and going through the short videos in each category. A point worth mentioning here is that the materials needed in creating any art project are those easily available at home, for instance old papers, glue, bottle caps, plastic bottles, colours, etc., thus it becomes interesting to create something from ordinary everyday stuff.

The short videos in each category are about six minutes in length, with sub-categories ‘Look and Respond’, ‘Can you?’ and ‘Let’s play.’

Visitors can get inspiration by other artists while going through a stimulating slide show with discussion questions in ‘Look and respond’; while the ‘Can you?’ section will provide steps for a hands-on explanation on any activity according to the category being looked up. Lastly, in ‘Let’s play’ section, you can play games, quizzes, or indulge in various creative activities.

The site provides links and interactive games on a wide range of visual arts topics. This resource requires Adobe Flash and PDF reader software like Adobe Acrobat.

To explore the world of visual arts, visit http://www.iamanartist.ie/

Published in Dawn, Young World April 22nd, 2017