Your Child is an Artist #7

In Chapter 15 ("Let Him Do it His Way"), Zaidenberg writes that the three ingredients for creative growth are:

1)IMAGINATION

2)COURAGE

3)VISION

"If a child insists on making a horse green, let him; your function as a teacher would be solely to show him that green may be made with yellow and blue pigment" (93).

I love this quote. Reading it makes me teary-eyed. Before I began teaching full-time, I worked as a substitute teacher. (That was over a decade ago!) One of my assignments was in a preschool classroom, and the lesson plan called for me to sit at a kidney shaped table during centers-rotation and supervise four-year-olds paint pumpkins orange and cats black. (It was October.) I hated having to tell little ones who wanted to paint their cats orange that they couldn't. (There ARE orange cats! Chagall painted a cat GREEN!) But I was a rule-follower and I made sure all of those four-year-olds painted their cats black.

I can add this example to the list of reasons why I'm happy to be homeschooling. This lesson taught nothing of value. I'm sure the purpose was to teach colors, but these children already knew the names of the colors, and even if they didn't, they would have learned them eventually. 

"Encourage fearless exploration. Teach him to see cause and effect but let him find the Q.E.D.* himself and it will not necessarily be the same solution as yours. Do not force your mental heirlooms on him. Let him do it his way" (93).

I'll let her do it her way.

*Q.E.D.: an abbreviation for the Latin quod erat demonstrandum which means "which was to be demonstrated." Synonym for solution.

Your Child is an Artist #6

On Dexterity, Consistency, and Learning by Doing

Dexterity
"[D]exterity can be acquired by simple exercises with a pencil" (72). One thing Zaidenberg recommends to improve manual dexterity is rhythm patterns like hatching, cross-hatching, cross-hatching at a diagonal, curlicues, zig-zags, etc. (Some people might look at these rhythm exercises and see nothing but doodling, but these doodles improve dexterity.)

Consistency
"You must endeavor to direct the purposeful completion of the theme originally chosen by first eliciting the 'story' the child has conceived for execution and then recalling that theme to the not-always-constant mind of the child" (72). Ask your child to tell you the story of her drawing, then narrate the story back to your child while she continues to draw.

Learning by Doing (from pages 79-80)
Zaidenberg actually recommends "bribing" children to draw. "Offer an apple or a stick of candy in exchange for a drawing of that apple or candy... A series of tests with all the available easy objects should fix the drawing habit and start the training of eye and hand dexterity... At the same time, make a drawing of the object yourself, not in a spirit of competition but as a means of knowing from first-hand experience what problems your child faces...

"His drawing will usually have a freshness and lack of inhibition not to be found in yours even though your manual control may produce a more skillful approximation of the contours and forms."

Zaidenberg suggests working with basic forms - the circle, the square, and the triangle. "Any four-year-old child can draw a square or a circle in such a way that everyone will know what is intended." For example, to draw an apple, a child can draw a circle, and then add a detail "to give it directed meaning." For an apple, adding a stem conveys "the symbol of an apple," makes a child feel successful, and "stimulate[s] further attempts."

This reminds me of a famous quote by Cezanne:

"Allow me to repeat what I said when you were here: deal with nature by means of 

the 

CYLINDER, 

the 

SPHERE 

and 

the 

CONE, 

all placed in perspective, so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point."

If you can draw a cylinder, a sphere, and a cone, you can draw anything! 

Your Child is an Artist #5

On Criticism

When we critique our children's artwork, Zaidenberg suggests we consider:

1)How interested was my child in the object and the problem?

2)How much ingenuity and imagination did my child bring to the drawing?

3)How closely did my child emulate the appearance of the object?*

*Least important

I love this quote from page 76: 

"[T]he exact simulation of an object is far less important than is a unique viewpoint and imagination and intensity of observation."

Regarding Number 1, to get a child interested in an object, we have to present the object - like an apple - so we "awaken in him a purposeful approach. If you want him to draw an apple, accompany the request that he draw it with a preamble which will make the apple an object of importance and even romance."

Zaidenberg suggests telling the story of William Tell, or Newton and the apple.

(Reading that made me think of how one could tell the myth of Persephone and then have students draw a pomegranate, or the fable "The Fox and the Grapes" and then have students draw a cluster of grapes.)

"Seeking constructive critical points"

To offer our children constructive criticism, Zaidenberg says we can examine their drawings for the following:

1)Sureness and quality of his lines

2)General proportions

3)An understanding of elements of perspective

4)A feeling for composition

5)Color quality

6)An understanding of light, its source and shadows and their cause

7)Subject matter and mood

If you'd like to read the other posts in this series, here they are:

#1

#2

#3

#4

Your Child is an Artist #4

In Chapter 11 of YCIAA, Zaidenberg writes about "Play."

"Public schools have always missed out in this integrating process [the integration of art and play] by the failure to realize the stimulus involved. Art classes, except in the kindergarten stages, are made into study courses, weighted down with exams and grades, a procedure always loaded with ominous portent for a child."

Zaidenberg suggests three games: the Wriggly Line Game, Dot to Dot, and the Blot Game.

For the Wriggly Line Game, give your child a page of wriggly lines, or squiggles, and have your child complete the drawing with whatever image the squiggle inspires.

Dot to Dot: "The play involved in drawing a line from number to number...also stimulates the ability to draw" (pg. 70). A couple of years ago, I thought dot to dots had little value - something teachers gave early-finishers as a way of keeping them quiet. But then, while reading up on intelligence testing, I came across information on the WISC's subtests, specifically Coding.

The following is from Think Tonight's website:

Coding measures visual-motor dexterity, associative nonverbal learning, and nonverbal short-term memory. Fine-motor dexterity, speed, accuracy and ability to manipulate a pencil contribute to task success; perceptual organization is also important. 

One of the suggestions for improving a child's performance on the coding portion of the WISC is Dot to Dot.

I have a couple of Extreme Dot to Dot books by Mindware, including Around the World which has famous landmarks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Russia's Saint Basil's Cathedral. On rainy days, when my students are stuck inside for recess, Dot to Dots are a great inside recess activity. What I love about the Around the World book is that the pictures get students asking where the landmarks are, which in turn leads them to ask other questions about geography and world cultures.

(The Dot to Dot book on Think Tonight's site is - to put it lightly - extremely challenging. Here is an example.)

Zaidenberg suggests making your own Dot to Dots for your child by tracing an image. You could also have your child make a Dot to Dot for you to complete, or for a sibling, or in a public school classroom, for another student.

The Blot Game is like the Rorschach test. The student puts a little paint on one side of a folded piece of paper, folds the paper over, and viola - a blot. It's "calculated to stimulate an interest in design."

Now, grab your paint and go play.

Your Child is an Artist #3

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

"The first scribbles of a very young child of three or four...are joyous emotional and physical outlets with no conscious strings...uninhibited, in contrast to the lack of adventurousness in the grown-up which causes him to follow a 'style' to its usually dead end[.]"

"[I]n addition to the free scribble process, he should be gently led to involve the conscious world of his daily life with this instinctive art flow."

Zaidenberg suggests playing a game with your preschool-age artist. When your child draws what appears to the adult-eye as a scribble, ask your child to help you find the shape of an object or a person or an animal. You can rotate the paper to do this. You can say, I see an elephant's face with a long trunk. It's the opposite of what an abstract artist does; an abstract artist starts with an elephant and "takes from that object the elements of shape and design which he considers important..."

Lastly, Zaidenberg says to ask your child how he FELT when he made the scribble. Does the scribble mean happiness or anger? Does the scribble tell a story?

Doing these things help a child make the connection that they can communicate their imagination and their feelings through art.

(quotes are from pages 64-65 of YCIAA by Zaidenberg)

Your Child is an Artist #2

A circle and line person my daughter drew a couple of months ago (2 years old)

In my last post, I wrote about Arthur Zaidenberg's Your Child is an Artist (1949).

Zaidenberg suggested children be given LOTS of (inexpensive) art materials, "lots of paper and many pots of paint and a wide variety of pencils and crayons for he will be induced to experimental and uninhibited productivity by a relatively unlimited supply." (pg. 60)

Zaidenberg's Basic Materials List:

pencils (drawing #2-#5; assorted colored pencils)

poster colors (a set of jars of paints)

water color set

brushes (5 in different sizes, "large brushes...will encourage him toward freedom of expression")

crayons (assorted colors; Zaidenberg suggested grease crayons; I use oil pastels in my classroom)

chalk (Zaidenberg suggested large flat pastels)

paper (large sheets of drawing paper and watercolor paper)

drawing board 24" x 36"

a child's easel

water jars, muffin pan for mixing, paint rags

~

SKETCH HABITS

"Habits are also most readily formed in childhood and once acquired are never a chore but part of a behavior pattern."

"The presentation of the first sketch book, preferably a bound one, should be made a significant occasion and each subsequent book should represent a step in the child's progress to be treasured."

"Persuade him to have a small sketch book with him at all times, to be filled with a rough record of all his adventures and the drawn details of their settings." (pg. 63)

Your Child Is An Artist

I've been looking through Arthur Zaidenberg's Your Child Is An Artist (copyright 1949), and have found some quotes I love and want to share...

"It only requires an examination of the lives of our friends and acquaintances to find comparison material for a study of the worth of a wholely 'utilitarian' education, i.e. one devoted to the study of such objects as will fit one into a successful career in business or science exclusively, as against an education which not only produces the competent, useful man but brings forth the man himself, in his richest potential, creative and appreciative of creation, able to express his emotions and understand the emotional expression of others." (32-33)

"It is my contention that this language [art], native to every child, lost in the inadequate educational process, can be reacquired." (33)

"The Austrian, Dr. Cizek, was among the first to introduce the theory that the teaching of art to children was a process of encouragement of the use of an instinctive language to be intuitively learned." (39) Adults tend to praise children based on how realistic their drawings are, and how they've gotten "better" at drawing something realistically.

"Parents should present their children with pencils, colored crayons and colored chalks at the earliest possible age, even at the risk of damage to the wallpaper." (59)

"One cannot teach drawing to a child...One can only prepare him to teach himself by supplying him with the tools, stimulating his interest, acquainting him with the importance of art and leading him on the natural graduated stages of his growth process into more and subtler artistic creation." (59) The author does suggest improving manual dexterity, mental dexterity, correcting misuse of materials, suggesting a child follow a path in which he or she showed an early aptitude.

"The 'don'ts' must prevent you from surrounding him with bad pictures in his home, suggesting second-rate pictures to copy and praising work of bad taste because they are 'popular' and done by 'successful' men." (59) No visual twaddle.