Take a bunch of 9-11 year olds, put a pencil in their hands and watch them draw wonderful things. Okay, usually it doesn’t quite go like that; there’s the moaning and whining about not be any good at this or it’s too hard. Where did the love of drawing go?

A few years ago I was asked to teach a drawing class to upper elementary school kids. Almost all these kids told me they couldn’t draw. I realized that these kids, like most adults, were unhappy with the outcome of their drawings that they eventually stopped trying. I set to work to change this attitude one small step at a time.

My best resources for this were:

• Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes
• The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
• Draw Squad by Mark Kistler

At the end of the eight week session only one of my 42 students had not improved. The others were proud and amazed at their success. Happy kids, happy teacher.

Drawing is not always about talent or lack of it. It, like most things, is about practice, practice, practice.

PS The Plaid Sheep

Tags: art, draw, drawing lessons

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.