I recently had a conversation with a friend about art. About helping her son learn art. We got into that "what is art and why thing". I really love it when that happens but it so rarely does. I had so much more to ask and explain when it was time to "let the barkeep close up".
At one point I told the friend that if she wanted to help her son to develop as an artist, she should throw away the How-To-Draw-A-Dog books. The conversation ended before I could explain why, and so after letting it float around in the attic matter for several nights, I awoke this morning to find the conclusion to the conversation had interlaced itself with an ongoing conversation Harry and I have been having about invention, improvisation, and innovation.
Funny those three words should start with "i". You wonder if I am going to talk about my iPhone again. No, but I am going to talk about the all-important "I" and why it is so important to help it find it's place in creativity.
The how-to-draw-a-dog books I am suggesting be file 13ed are the ones that tell your child to begin with a circle here, add another larger circle here, shoot some lines down for legs, connect them all with sketchy lines, and poof you have a dog. My problem with that is that is the way the book's author draws dogs. Maybe that is the way he also sees dogs. But my belief is that everyone has a unique view into this world and a unique way of describing that view back to others. If you haven't read my star post, please stop here, go read it and come back.
OK so if each person has a unique view of the world, can art be taught? I think the best way to teach art is to ask the learning artist a few questions. Questions about the principles and the elements of art are a good place to start. Maybe I need to repost those principles and elements tomorrow.
A productive question might be, "How did the lines in your drawing express the nature of that dog?" Or, "What colors did you choose to use to make your dog and why?" Or just, "Name the kinds of lines you can use to draw a dog: thick, thin, wirey, meandering, limp, perky, etc." Or, "Is the dog dark or light, cool or warm, and how do the colors tell about your dog?" If the answer is that the man in the book told you to draw the dog by starting with a circle for a head, how does that have anything to do with the dog you are drawing and the way you feel about that dog on this particular day?
If you teach a child to draw a dog a certain way, you are also teaching him not to use his own eyes to find the lines of the dog himself. You are pulling him out of touch with his very own senses and training him to be told how to feel and how to express what he is told he feels.
Some art is so technically "good" that the soul of the artist has been completely choked out. It seems there is such a delicate balance between excellent rendition of a subject and inventing a fresh expression of it. It is possible to focus so intensely on getting the colors so perfectly fresh that you stifle innovation, improvisation, and invention. While I am just as opposed to monkey art as to stifled art, I will leave that topic to another day.
Have an innovative one!
xo
suzy
PS. Since I am being a forthright & opinionated, I will just go ahead and say, to my friends, yes even to my friends, ESPECIALLY even to my dear wonderful friends whose children I love dearly, "In almost every situation where a parent tells me their child is artistically talented and superior, I have experienced their child's art to be painfully restricted, unnatural and even contorted. How-To-Draw-a-Dog books are found at the scene of the crime, alongside parents who continually say, "You are the best artist in your class." To compare children's art is a crime. To judge their art as good or bad is setting them up to be manipulated. Please set them free. If you can't do anything else, just shut your mouth and let them paint.