About a year ago my 5-year-old son drew in class, along with his classmates, a crab that represented the class to which they belonged (they were the class of crabs). His drawing was selected from among all to be something like the class logo, the drawing that would be printed on all pages of their work and on all the material they would use.
When we learn about it, we are proud of our son and his artistic abilities (as any parent would feel, come on). I even thought that I had inherited the good work before the role of both his father (I have always been told that I draw very well), and his mother, who draws very well.
However, throughout this course, I have been able to see the drawings of other children and they are more colorful, more complex and more realistic than the ones my son makes. Some tend to hang outside, so that we see them parents (choose the coolest, apparently) and my son's drawings do not seem to deserve that honor. So, comparing, I realize that my son is one of the worst draws in his class. After going through the matter several times I have understood why and then I will explain, in addition, why I have decided not to help you do better.
His drawings have no volume
As you can see in the drawing that heads the entrance, his drawings have no volume. Let's say that the only thing that brings a little "mass" is the head, being a circle and the body, the extremities being sticks that end with other sticks that serve as hands and feet. The drawings that I have seen in his classmates wear clothes, sometimes with buttons, arms have volume and sometimes draw up hands and fingers. The legs also have volume and many paint beautiful pants and shoes.
His drawings have no color
Since there are almost no areas with volume there is very little to paint. Anyway, what little there is to paint does not paint and, if it does, use a single color for everything. Imagine the face that remains when someone gives you a coloring story, sometimes accompanied by a beautiful assortment of colors with which to paint it, and use a single color to paint everything, getting out pretty and getting tired right away (“Dad, follow you ").
The drawings of his companions, however, are full of color. They are varied, they wear clothes with combined colors, matching pants (or not) and there are even girls who paint red circles as cheeks on the faces of their characters.
He hardly spends time
As his drawings are a network of circles and sticks everywhere it doesn't take long to make them, dedicating only the necessary time to complete what you are drawing. Sometimes, if you want to draw more, turn the sheet and continue on the other side.
The drawings of their classmates must take their time for how detailed they are, for the color combinations that force children to change their pencil at various times and because some paint soil, flowers and other elements.
My concern
After seeing all this, and knowing that last year his drawing of the crab was selected as the best, I began to think that my son was not learning enough or that he did not put the necessary effort at the time of drawing. I also thought that maybe I didn't know how to do it better and that maybe it might be a good idea to teach him four tricks to start giving volume to his drawings and to start giving them color, so that they will be more beautiful.
I suddenly understood ...
However, I suddenly understood why my son is one of the worst draws of his class, since I stopped thinking like the Armando child, the one who made drawings that people valued as beautiful or precious and began to think like him, just watching him, realizing that he uses the drawing, not as a tool to do something colorful that then someone must evaluate to say how beautiful it is, but as a method to communicate. Let's say Jon draws to explain what he doesn't know how to explain in letters or what it would take a while to express in words (a picture is worth a thousand words). Let's say you draw what you are representing in your imagination and the goal is to tell it, without more.
It was hard for me to understand (short that is one), but when I found it, I was glad and suddenly I lost the need to help you do better. My son draws when he wants to do it. Sometimes he is playing with his dolls and suddenly he feels the need to translate something on paper. Then run to the closet, take out a paper, pick up any pen (sometimes a marker) and, with unbridled passion, start drawing characters doing something concrete. Sometimes, as I say, turn the paper and continue. Sometimes he runs for another role and sometimes he just keeps the first of his works.
Then he leaves her there and looks at her while he continues playing, as if he were to guide her or as if evaluating what the following drawing should contain. Sometimes he shows up with one showing us and many other times (most) we see them by chance, when we enter the room and see what he has done.
Not intended to please
When he brings them to us he never says “look dad, what I have done”, hoping to please him as the child who wants to be congratulated for doing something nice, but he teaches us to explain what he has drawn “this is such, This is which and here he is telling him to do this or what other“.
Then I remember the drawings of the children in his class and I observe a child who smiles, maybe some flower, a tree or a house and I see a kind of photo. I see the drawing of a photo in which a child smiles with a beautiful landscape in the background. Then I look at my son's and I see that, in any of his drawings, if I ask him, he explains a situation, an event, something that is happening, something he wants to tell.
If I help you, the drawing would stop being communication
And that's the difference. I have always drawn because I liked to do it, but partly with the intention that someone would later see it and congratulate me later or to receive the approval of my parents or guardians, or adults, whom I presupposed with the Enough wisdom to judge my abilities. So I changed my way of doing according to the scores of the teachers, I adapted the drawings as they told me it was beautiful or that it was not so much and so I deleted things I did because "this is not going to like".
If I get to take my son and explain some techniques to make beautiful drawings I would have modified the objective. Pure and hard communication method, where premium history and not how it is told, would have managed to divert the method to something where the way of telling it is more important than the story. In fact, many times, a story is not even necessary (who draws a sun, a house, a field, a car and a flower is not explaining an event).
And not only that, if I had told him how to draw to make it prettier it would have made him believe that it is important that it be beautiful, I would have made him believe that I do know how the drawings should be and that he is not doing them well and would have made believe that, In order for it to be worth drawing, someone must tell you after you have done well.
Now I can only hope that at school they respect his drawings as a method of communication and that they do not fall into the need to teach him to do it well, basically, because now he enjoys as a dwarf (never better said) drawing when he feels the need to do so and I don't know if he will continue doing it the day he feels compelled to draw to please.
