Bad Art Club founder Daniel Freedman, center, draws with other uninhibited artists, including 6-year-old Hudson Gootkind, right, during an event in the Hi-Fidelity Brewing parking lot during the East Bayside Block Party in Portland last month. Freedman’s club is a group committed to making art accessible and fun. Carl D.
Walsh/Staff Photographer Grace Korman, a professional woodworker and painter, used a Sharpie to draw an outline of a bird in a nest in one corner of a large piece of scrap canvas draped over two tables. Beneath the Bad Art Maine tent in the parking lot of Hi-Fidelity Brewing, she filled in the bird with many shades of gold “Do you want to mess up my bird?” she asked. Daniel Freedman was doodling on the other side of the table and immediately said yes.
“I know that’s your favorite part,” Korman said. Freedman added red eyebrows and accents to make the bird angry, and the pair laughed at the cartoonish result. Hudson Gootkind, 6, strode up to the tent with a shy confidence, trailed by his two adults.
He surveyed the flock of funky pastel birds already crowding the canvas perimeter. As eight adults around him drew, he gripped a stubby black pastel tightly and boldly outlined what looked to be a humanoid bird. As he filled in its belly, he proudly declared, “It’s a penguin.
” By the time he was done, both his forearms were smeared with rainbows of oil-pastel dust. “Little kids are fearless,” Freedman said, grinning as he watched Gootkind at w.