I, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts, taught my daughter to draw for ten years, and found that parents are most prone to make these mistakes in the cultivation of originality

Every child is born with a pen and doodles on paper, but not many children can actually embark on the road of art creation. Even many children have lost their enthusiasm for painting when they were young, and when they grow up, they can no longer feel the joy of art. So what's the problem? As parents, how can we guide our children on the right path to painting? The following mother of the Academy of Fine Arts combined her own creative experience and thoroughly pondered the "little thing" of painting enlightenment with her two daughters' ten-year learning process.

Wen 丨 Zhuang Xiao ed

Painting is a state of mind, an expression and a kind of creation. But it is not difficult to find that there are many children who like to draw today, but as the children grow up, there are fewer and fewer children who can draw originally.

Ming Ming is a master of graffiti, but why is it difficult for some children to pick up pen and ink when they grow up?

How can children's whimsical ideas become valuable original motivation for them in the future?

How can we guide children to draw correctly so that their future is not limited?

Han Han, who graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, may never have imagined that one day, she would think about artistic enlightenment for her children. Self-taught, drawing is as simple as eating and drinking.

However, her two lovely daughters seem to be "insulated" from art:

My sister in kindergarten once cried at home because she couldn't draw;

The younger sister, who has been behind her sister's ass since she was a child, is also behind children of the same age in her paintings.

But Han Han, who was determined to teach his daughter how to paint, spent nearly ten years pondering the "little thing" of painting.

The two sisters who painted with their mother all the way finally accumulated their hair and grew into the appearance that their mother expected with exquisite and vivid paintings.

The creation of her fourteen-year-old sister Chenxi is ingenious with a pen and has a strong cultural atmosphere.

Swipe left to see more work

Ten-year-old sister Xingchen is meticulous in her observations, just a glimpse of the ordinary street, but also can use a brush to forever freeze the excitement of the winter street on the drawing paper.

This year, Xingchen's original work "New Year Lion Dance" is lively and vivid, not only depicting the lively scene of Guangzhou's traditional lion dance, but also creating a group of onlookers of different shapes with wild imagination, and even carefully drawing two humanoid "big-headed monsters" in the onlookers, which won the national special prize of the "Ode to Hope National Youth Calligraphy and Painting Art Exhibition" and the first prize of Guangdong Province.

Netizens also vividly compared the sisters' artistic talent that quickly "overflowed" to "being chased by God to feed and eat". However, in Han Han's opinion, talent is just an additional gift from God, but if you don't use it, talent is useless.

For the vast majority of children, as long as they use the right methods, everyone has the potential to become an original master.

Note: For the convenience of readers, the following is narrated in the first person of Han Han.

Every child can draw "without drafting"

I've loved drawing since I was a kid. At that time, there were no painting interest classes, so I painted all the way to the Chinese painting department of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. After graduating from Guangmei, I put down my brush and plunged into a new industry, too busy to take care of my daughter at home, let alone give her artistic enlightenment.

Once the kindergarten organized the children to go to the lake to sketch, and I found that my daughter came back with an unhappy face. After careful inquiry, I realized that when we were painting together, other children danced and painted happily, and only my daughter guarded the drawing board, did not know how to use the pen, and was so anxious to cry on the side.

Actually, I also took painting classes in kindergarten before. Every time she took the drawing home from class, although I would verbally praise a few words, I always felt a little unimpressed - do you still have to teach such a "simple" thing as drawing?

The picture on the left is a painting brought by the older sister of the kindergarten class

The picture on the right is the creation of my 11-year-old sister

But this time, heartbroken by my daughter's setback, I came up with the idea of teaching my child to draw. Before this, I had never had experience in art education, so I also began to wonder, how can I guide children to draw in a language that children understand. What should be the first step for children to learn to draw?

Most of the feasible solutions come from successful experiences. Remembering my experience of not being able to draw when I was a child, I decided to ask my sister to abandon the habit of making drafts before drawing, and instead learn to make a stroke on blank paper.

Pen and pen are a beautiful feeling. Drawing without drawing can not only express the chest directly, stimulate children's spirituality, but also allow them to exercise the ability to adapt to changes in the process of painting, so it is an edification and the cultivation of ability.

The picture on the right is the sister drawn by my sister

The picture on the left is the younger sister in the eyes of the elder sister

1. Learn to use line segments to observe everything

After thinking about it, in my sister's first lesson, I decided to guide her with lines as the mainstay.

For children in the enlightenment period, the line is graffiti, and it is also the basis for us to draw everything after picking up the brush.

Whether it is Chinese or Western painting, we must teach children how to observe lines, how to express everything they see into lines.

What would a tree blown by the wind look like?

In a river where people are swimming, will the water be soothing or rapid?

Is a house a round roof or a square roof?

My sister is practicing pen control

When learning to draw, I will also encourage her to use more brushes and draw a tree, a river, and a house in the form of lines.

Is it possible to express a soft feeling with a gentle curve?

Is it possible to use short, heavy lines to reflect the weight of the item?

These copied paintings, how do their lines change, can you learn to draw them?

Line exercises for my 8 year old sister

Half of the drawing refused to draw, and finally an episode of cartoons was rewarded

Sometimes, I upload my daughter's drawings online. Background netizens also left messages with the post, worried that the child's premature copying of the painting would limit the child's imagination.

But I don't think copying has anything to do with imagination at all. You see, from the very beginning of birth, children have to babbling, isn't this an imitation? Imitation is also a kind of learning.

A copy of her 9-year-old sister

There was a period of artistic enlightenment, and it was very popular for children to splash paint to create. This approach may help children develop artistic talents, but in my opinion, it does not help children stimulate their imagination, just play with children.

The cultivation of children's imagination must be based on ordinary observation and thinking. Without the participation of thinking, the germination of imagination is like a tree without roots and water without a source, which cannot withstand scrutiny. A lot of copying is to give children a window to learn how to observe and how painters think.

Seeing the works she liked, my sister couldn't help but copy and learn

Therefore, copying will not harm children's imagination, only professional art training can help children and better use brushes to outline their imaginary world.

What hurts the imagination may be our limitations. For example, the house is a triangular roof, the sun is a round face plus a few lines, you must let the child draw how accurately...

These restrictions will only make the child's imaginary world become thinner and thinner, and over time, when the child grows up, he naturally cannot "write like a god", dare not draw or even can't draw, and has no interest in painting.

Painting of my sister at the age of 8

Since she started writing without a pencil, she thought about what to draw

2. Learning to draw requires little by little guidance

Now, whenever my children have time, I take them outdoors to sketch, replace the camera with a brush, and create more opportunities for them to observe nature and society.

My sister went to the zoo to practice sketching when she was 11 years old

In the process, I actually took some detours. I used to teach children to draw Chinese paintings. As a result, after teaching for a semester or two, the child did not improve at all.

At this time, I realized that I was a little too anxious. Children with weak foundations need to use simple brushes to explore the world little by little.

If they switch to brushes or other more advanced painting materials from the beginning, the final picture may be good, but in fact, it pushes them directly into a more difficult three-dimensional world, but it will hurt their confidence in learning to draw.

If you want to be fast, you can't do it, so I don't recommend sending your children to various art drawing crash courses. If you want your child to draw well, you still have to observe and accumulate more.

A 10-year-old sister sketching photo

After all, the relationship between points and line segments has not yet been firmly mastered, and they are required to abstract the world in the form of color blocks, isn't this just pulling seedlings to help?

Later, when my sister learned to draw, I learned this lesson, and when she understood the structure and lines well enough, I asked her to try drawing capitalization, and sure enough, she didn't encounter any levels and started easily.

A Chinese painting by her 10-year-old sister

3. Color is important, but for children, color is not so important

We are now living in better and better conditions, and we have more and more tools for drawing. I often see 180-color or even 360-color markers on the Internet.

Some parents may have moved all these utensils back home with the idea of being good for their children. But I don't know if you will observe a phenomenon that the more brush colors, the less children dare to draw with strokes.

Do you think, if you hold a large stack of colored pens, ask your child which one to use? The child will surely be curious to try each of them. But this poses a problem: it seems that children choose freedom, but it also means that they are easily lost in freedom.

Under the perennial immersion of the cultural system, we have a conventional awareness of the color order and formed a public aesthetic. This also inevitably requires children to not be too free in color learning, and to have an understanding of the use of color.

So when the sisters first started to draw, I only prescribed them to use 24-color markers, and they kept drawing for a long time. Until they had mastered the warmth and coldness of colors, and the contrast between light and dark, I slowly added the number to them, first 42 colors, and then more than 100.

In the end, the sisters made a smooth transition to watercolor painting.

My 7-year-old sister learned to color for the first time, and she didn't use color much

Nowadays, whether it is a complex thangka copy or a simple Chinese painting sketch in daily life, the sisters can boldly use the pen and complete it in one go.

The older sister who can't draw pictures

Their growth has made me believe that every child can have the ability to draw without drafting, and successfully establish abstract and generalized drawing thinking.

The source of creation lies in the cultivation of picture awareness

We sometimes also worry, how can a child's painting be a good creation? How can we appreciate their work?

In my opinion, judging whether a child's painting is good or not is not whether the painting looks like it, but the sense of picture they convey. This is actually an artistic expression, something more precious than painting skills.

Creative drawing of naughty sister

In the initial stage of enlightenment. Although I ask my children to practice simple lines, I don't ask them to draw a tree or a house all morning, isn't that too boring? What is the point of children learning to draw?

So when I first learned to draw, I would set a scene with my child. For example, we can play games together, go swimming together, go to the zoo together, and paint around these scenes, and children will not only have fun, but also unconsciously exercise their imagination.

If the child still can't draw, I will also ask him to tell a story, stimulate his desire to express, and guide them to start drawing.

My sister's work when she was 8 years old

I have always felt that painting is another form of language. Like writing essays, teachers often set a writing theme close to life, and children can use their own words and sentences, as for how to write texts, or each according to their feelings.

Drawing is the same, different forms of lines, like the words that children know, the lines are not good, just practice more, the key is that they can accurately draw the story in their minds.

Theme painting "A Cat's Life" for my 11-year-old sister

Some people marvel at my daughter's ability to "draw with one stroke", which is exactly what I pay least attention to, and I think what really makes them great is their creative ability on the spot.

For example, our sister, she can directly draw our trip to Huanggang into a series of comics from different perspectives without looking at all the profile photos.

Although she has not been trained in painting skills for too long, because she has been playing behind her sister since she was a child, she has been immersed in the consciousness of the picture, always paying attention to daily observations, and constantly using her brain to describe the scenes that are happening at the moment, which is like a child who has read Tang poetry since she was a child, and naturally exported it when she grows up.

Children who do not have a sense of picture do not need to worry, like me, before each painting, children will repeatedly ask them three questions:

Is it possible to express a soft feeling with a gentle curve?

Is it possible to use short, heavy lines to reflect the weight of the item?

These copied paintings, how do their lines change, can you learn to draw them?

This is a process of thinking and transformation, the child must first understand and digest his emotions and consciousness, know what painting is all about, figure out why it is expressed this way, and finally the way the work is finally presented.

The creation class with the theme of children's camping is very amazing

There is no standard template for painting, and the child must figure it out and feel it before he can draw it.

This is also the embodiment of the child's emotional perception ability. At first, children's brushstrokes may be very immature, but these pictures with thoughts and feelings are the energy we really get from painting.

Illustration by my sister who is 11 years old

In fact, there is no fixed and accurate answer in art education, and the only criterion is how to inspire a person's feelings and thinking, and then create. That's why, in most cases, I don't let children revise their drawings repeatedly.

Although it is impossible for them to paint without mistakes, these opportunities for mistakes are the opportunity for them to exercise their ability to adapt to changes, and even make mistakes on paper and reimagine their works.

Sometimes, I also often tell children that painting with a sense of picture is like a general leading troops to war. Children trained in this way will definitely be very powerful in the future.

YOUNGER SISTER ON IPAD, CREATING COMICS WITH HER FINGERS

Character copying is the only way to improve your painting skills

Education is a kind of shaping. The growth of a child is a process of continuous shaping.

Take the matter of learning to draw, at the beginning, the child may be interested and liked, but liking can never achieve a person, must be coupled with persistence, but also in learning to overcome difficulties, and finally get happiness, is the real happiness.

I often tell my daughter, choose one thing firmly, don't choose too much, and don't give up halfway.

At the beginning of my child's learning to draw, I would pick a drawing time and fix it. Over time, they will also get used to painting quietly in the studio. As their creations became more complex, they spent more and more time sitting in the studio.

My sister read the album carefully, and my sister ate while watching

Of course, every child is different. I once met a child in the studio who had been traveling all over Europe and the United States with his mother since he was a child, but it was difficult to get him to sit in the studio for 40 minutes. Children like this may be better suited to outdoor sports or adventures.

Now children are easily caught up in speed and anxiety, but art requires you to stop. To cultivate a child who learns to draw, it must be quiet first and then move. We still need to spend a lot of time copying and creating, and cultivate children's high concentration ability in painting.

The picture on the left is a little girl learning to draw together, copying very seriously;

The sister on the right was distracted and didn't draw the carriage into it, which I criticized

After the child has picture awareness, we can take the child and enter the practice of a more professional field.

For example, with children, know the structure of the human body, know what the static human body looks like, and what the dynamics are.

Sister's character sketching exercise

This step is very key, because we tell stories without characters, so people are a thing that often appears in our pictures, whether it is Chinese and Western painting, we have to face the problem of character modeling.

But the human skeletal structure, compared to freewheeling drawing, is boring, parents must be guided a little according to the age and acceptance of their children.

This is a slow accumulation process, as the child's cognition improves, she will become more and more sensitive to these complex structures, and the dynamics will be relatively more accurate.

Sister's character dynamics exercise

It is worth mentioning that although I often encourage children to copy a lot, I never advocate children copying Japanese cartoons.

Most of these character creations that quickly became popular based on business models have a unified hairstyle, uniform facial features, and even a unified body shape and posture, which does not help children observe the details of the characters at all, but interferes with their painting thinking.

brief summary

Children in the enlightenment stage need the encouragement of adults, but when the child grows up, these words of encouragement will turn pale, and sometimes, sincere advice is the greatest support for the child.

Now, I omit the storytelling link, guide them to read more literary works, and directly put forward the propositional requirements of painting, such as asking them to use a painting to directly reflect light and shadow, pen and ink or a certain painting technique.

Of course, the scale for children's growth must still be left. When the child copies the "Qingming Upper River Map", she may have just begun to draw beyond recognition; The second time, I would ask her to draw a certain part more precisely; By the third and fourth time she came with a goal, her ability was slowly improving.

It is very challenging to copy the parts of the upper river map of Qingming,

The child drew a little depressed

We learn to draw, and I never teach you to draw a horse, you only draw a horse. It's about teaching you ways to know things, which can be used in any aspect of life.

Like my sister, who recently registered as an original artist of 3D printing online, she started the art creation of 3D printing without a teacher; The younger sister also made a self-made animation, and each frame was her own original drawing.

The sisters made a 3D printed dinosaur

So I never worry about my children's future employment. From ancient times to the present, our art has never been divorced from reality. In the future, my daughter can draw comics, picture books, animation, and she can do whatever art form she wants.

Sister 3D modeling homemade figure

In my opinion, the essence of painting is not only that we can paint a picture so beautifully, but also to help children shape a character, a perseverance, a cognition, a state.

I always believe that by giving children basic creative and aesthetic skills, they will eventually be able to take better care of themselves in the future. This should also be the biggest gain for children to draw from elementary school.