An
oil-painting
grandfather on one side and a grandmother on the other. A draftsman/artist
father. Family example created a rich environment full of learning experiences
in Cat's early encounters with art. Granddad
demonstrated oil painting techniques; Grandma taught sketch to keep the kids
settled down while waiting for Mom after school. Dad overlooked the abduction of
his drafting templates and praised the architectural designs that resulted.
Art can be used for expression
and communication even before reading and writing have been learned.
The kids around here began drawing pictures
as a means of family input well before they began writing notes. They gave
pictures to say thank you when they particularly liked something that happened
during their day. They also made grand graphical statements on the 4 ft. X 8 ft.
chalkboard, for instance a picture of four smiling children and an ogreish
mommy.
Well, they say you know you've arrived when you've
been caricatured.
Art is also a creative process.
It does require intuition, but intuition is built by exposure to a rich visual
world - just like musical understanding and sensitivity are built by exposure to
a rich inventory of sound.
Creative art draws on a foundation
of previous input - styles, use of colour, themes and expressions.
The best way to build that
foundation is by going to the art gallery, reading books that feature good
reproductions of great artwork, or even just reading the Saturday cartoons and
taking time to absorb the different styles.
Art is like multiplication
tables and square roots.
It's more about practice
than it is about natural bent.An excellent resource for training the eye
and hand to work together is Complete-A-Sketch. Created by a draftsman,
it uses the skills of applied art to give solid technical training.
One of the kids' favourite gifts
was a book called 1-2-3 Draw. They have each spent hours poring
over its simple, clear examples of how to create basic forms and develop a
sketch. The result has been some pretty precocious artwork. A re-usable, static
resource like that has been as effective as an expensive set of lessons, and
they've never needed help with it. Because it's all based on step-by-step illustrations, they
don't even need to be able to read to use it.
The kids all have their own
unique areas of interest. Banana Brain likes drawing castles and horses.
Squirrelly Girlie is beginning to practice the human form, her main area of
interest being the princesses who live in Banana's castles. Even at the age of
four, Brat Boy was putting out some rather detailed machinery sketches -
bulldozers with tracks and all the correct parts, trucks, and other heavy
equipment. Unlike their mother in Kindergarten at that age, they're not told
what to draw or how to draw it - unless they ask. They take the lead in their
own learning experience, and they own the knowledge they acquire.
