Kid's Art Secrets: Drawing Still-Life

Why Pencils have Erasers & Food is Food!

By Chris Dunmire, www.creativeslush.com

I believe the best teachers (instructors, facilitators) have this one quality in common: openness to experience. Yes, we are open to the dynamic unfolding that happens in our teaching environments, including that of being open to learning from our students. Yes, just because we are in the teaching position doesn't mean that we can't learn a new thing or two from those we are instructing. So when I had an opportunity to help teach a kid's summer art camp to a group of highly-energized 6- to 9-year-old's, I embraced the opportunity, dressed in my most playful clothes, and was open to learning from the kids.

One whole day of the art camp was devoted to drawing still-life. In preparation, the lead teacher went shopping for various pieces of interesting-looking produce the night before — lettuce, celery, eggplant, oranges, grapefruit, apples — and carefully laid them all out on the studio table before all the little artists arrived. When they did, each student was invited to choose three different fruits and vegetables to draw in their own working space.

For the next two hours the art studio was buzzing with creativity as a "tossed salad" of fruit and vegetables materialized onto white drawing paper. The kids were having fun, no doubt, but the most intriguing thing to me was the complete contrast an art class full of children have with an art class full of adults. Here are some of my observations and what I learned as a teacher at a kid's art camp.

Why Pencils Have Erasers

As artist adults we often get anxious when faced with a blank sheet of paper. Making the first mark and allowing ourselves to "mess up" the paper is akin to having teeth pulled at the dentist. Sometimes we get so overwhelmed with the idea that we must be perfect in our art that we hold back expressing ourselves imperfectly and secretly spend our days yearning to be artists, foregoing opportunities to simply practice being artists.

What can kids teach us in this regard? Plenty. First of all, kids have no problem messing up paper. Kids' drawings are often accentuated with smears and smudges and of erased lines that you can still see after the fact. Their papers fall on the floor, get stepped on or torn, but they still proudly present us with wonderful works of creative expression, of imaginative stories with charming characteristics we adults can never forgive ourselves for.

One of the best-kept secrets kids have for dealing with their blank-page anxiety is the sharpening-the-pencil diversion. They'll get up and head straight for the pencil sharpener, knowing that its buzzing sound is really creative magic being zapped into the pencil point. Do you notice that when the point is just so they'll dive right in to their work? Look around the table top when they're finished drawing. The pile of pencil erasures alone will let you in on another secret: Kids know why pencils have erasers and embrace it as the most perfect drawing tool in the world.

You Can Eat the Still-Life

Some final thoughts on kids and drawing what's in front of them. Still-life models may be fun for awhile, but drawing from the imagination makes youthful creativity cells buzz with glee. When the kids were released from their vegetable subjects and allowed to draw "cartoony things" and other wonders straight from their imaginations, three-legged sharks with machete's cut right through the quiet fruit and vegetables in a dish and googly-eyed characters swimming in pools of blue wavy water filled the drawing paper right up to its edges. Creativity was unleashed and unbounded!

Alas, when young artists get hungry they have no qualms about eating the edible still-life after it's been captured on paper either. With my own two eyes I watched them devour not only the apples and oranges, but the grapefruit and celery too — without being prompted.

"Did you wash that first?" I asked.

"Wash what?" was the crunching, munching response with the happiest grin you'll ever see.

Wide-eyed and in disbelief that the celery too, was eaten, I concluded that the art studio magically turns green vegetables and sour fruit into candy. And then I remembered that with energized kids and a flourishing imagination, everything is possible. •

About the Author | More Articles
Chris Dunmire is the CEO of Creative Slush Playbooks and the driving force behind multiple creativity-inspiring articles, projects, and features for the Creativity Portal Web site. She's trained as a creativity coach with Eric Maisel, Ph.D., and teaches creativity and art-related workshops using her playbooks (not workbooks!) to inspire people of all ages to explore and express their individual creativity.