Your child and art

Creativity is a quality that needs to be nurtured and encouraged by parents, grandparents and teachers. With all the technology the art world has changed the way we create images. Before computers an artist had to use their brains and hands to be creative without making mistakes in the final piece of art.

I remember spending a long time reproducing a set of fonts by hand for use on mock-ups with pencil then applying ink. It taught me how a slight line can make all the difference in the world of the look of a font. A mistake in ink usually required starting all over. Pencils, paint, clay and paper are the way to learn to draw initially.

At an art show of my grandchildren;s work I was elated to see that they used crayons, watercolor and pencils. One project was to re-create a magazine image that was selected by the teacher. Everyone did used the same image. What they produced was works of art each having a unique slant on the image. This was great to see and my grandchildren were proud of what they did with their own two hands.

Computers are a great medium to add to or enhance the original hand-drawn rendering. I want to teach kids to draw by hand as they learn so much more. My grandchildren wanted to use stencils to make a Mother's Day card but watching me draw a picture and write words freestyle made them quickly want to do the same. They were proud of how they drew something just by watching grandma and looking at photos.

The first thing I had them look at was to find shapes in the picture. Looking closely they could see squares, circles and triangles. Computers should be used as a medium but being able to actually hand draw an image helps develop the artistic eye for detail and adds their own individual style. This style and creativity is what makes them unique and also aids in teaching life skills.