help- Teaching Drawing to 9 Year Olds

#20

I’ve been teaching my 8 year old son some things about drawing, and at this stage what seems to benefit him the most is learning to see correctly. The first two things that I’m working with him the most are proportion and angles. First, learning to interpret how long a cartoon character or any other object is, and marking that on the page, then comparing the angles of certain lines and accurately placing those in the drawing.

Once he gets a hold of this, I think the next thing will be alignment of verticals and horizontals (plumb lines)… so looking at ‘Spiderman’s left eye’ then draw an imaginary line all the way down and see what it touches… it might touch the kneecap, maybe a toe, etc…

That way, things are properly aligned in 2d space…

then later on… (maybe in 1-2 years…) we can start thinking more in terms of 3d shapes.

Ideally he would be able to switch between 2d and 3d mindsets while making a drawing… but that’s super advanced at this stage. So for now, all that matters is silhouette and proportion. It seems that the biggest battle right now is keeping him away from drawing details first (hair, fingers, wrinkles, etc…) in order to focus on the structural aspect of the drawing.

#21

Good stuff, ariel. Thanks.

I agree about finding the horizontals and verticals, and starting broadly, then working on details. If I can just get them to work on the whole image at once, instead of focusing on details, I’d be happy. This is all stuff in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain too. I’ll add this thinking into my suggestions to them.

#22

I have 3 - 7 year olds in my house. There is a big difference between them an 9 year olds but for what it’s worth … my son loves to draw after watching cartoons. First he starts with characters from the movies but eventually he makes his own variations of robots, dragons, dogs and so on. I find that they also like to illustrate stories so you might encourage them to illustrate their own stories.

I tried to teach them shading and breaking down an object into shapes but it didn’t really ‘click’ fully at the time. I just went back to school about 4 weeks ago to study animation and they saw me doing the animated flour sacks and when I showed them how these turned into animation they spent the next two days drawing ‘frames’ of simple stuff all on their own. I decided to capitalize on their interest an picked up a simple ‘Learn to Draw Dinosaurs’ type book that showed how to draw them from basic geomtetric shapes and this time it caught - they spent a week fighting for the book but instead of the flounder/flattened style characters (both eyes on one side etc) they have begun using overlapping shapes and erasing lines and better understanding the concepts.

Hope some of these observations may be helpful.

Hmm… one more quick thought … maybe for a ‘pre-perspective’ training you can create the horizon lines etc and create simple perspective objects like cubes and make copies then invite them to use thier creativity to turn the row of cubes into houses etc -think of it like the first writing paper kids are given that indicates the height and midpoint of capitals and small letters when they are learning to write.

#23

Yeah, these girls are the same way. They love to draw their cartoon characters. Their fav is Inuyasha. Last night they went to town drawing characters from that manga. They have some stories that they are working on, so illustrating them is an excellent idea.

On the animation tip, a friend told me that he got his kids into animation with post-it note pads and stamps. I thought that was brilliant. Its not drawing, but good animation practice.

The idea of giving them examples to draw on is an interesting one…hmmmm. I’ll have to see how I can work that into their lessons.

Im pretty much giving up on perspective for now, I’ll pick it up on down the road.

#24

Even though I’m not teaching them perspective any more, I thought you all might like to see the results of their efforts when they were doing that. Last night I told them they could just draw whatever they wanted, and they had a lot more fun. They picked some Inuyasha Manga they have from the public library, and copied drawings. I dont have scans of those. Sorry

Unah:

In this one she turned her box into a grocery bag. We also practiced a bit of shading.

This is her freeform interpretation of my, “draw a main street” assignment. I used a road receeding into the distance as my first example of how perspective works.

Madison:

She wrote down what vertical and horizontal meant. They were having a hard time keeping them straight. I think its funny how she “cheated” on the far left box. I came to realize they didn’t understand what the receeding lines had to do with anything!

Another road. Madi liked using the top edge of her paper as the horizon. I saw nothing wrong with that.

Its interesting to me how our cognitive skills and visual intellegence develops. Im learning more from these lessons than the girls are!

Adam

#25

This is a neat thread to read. Keep updating it =).

#26

I’m an internship away from a degree in elementary education and I can tell you most states have a website listing PASS objectives for their educational expectations. These standards serve as an outline for teaching all the various subjects according to grade level which “usually” fits within the childs developmental level. You may already be aware of this but if not it will give you a good outline to formulate a lesson plan. Hope that helps if you teach more in the future. In addition, I taught a lesson on perspective to 4th graders and found powerpoint to be really helpful. Here’s a link to Oklahoma’s PASS objectives, keep in mind, Oklahoma ranks almost fifty in everything on a state by state scope, fifty being baaad.
http://www.sde.state.ok.us/home/home01_test.html?http://www.sde.state.ok.us/publ/pass.html!

#27

What an excellent resource, crutch! Im going to print out all the stuff on that page that has to do with visual art, and see how I can work it into fun lessons. Thats really key here too. Almost all the posts above talk about keeping the kids interested and not being too technical about the lessons, teaching them to explore and express themselves. How do you take this list of measurable goals and them into fun lessons that wont bore them to death? I’m going to go look for a washington version of this.

Thanks again!
Adam

#28

Haha, I have a couple of classmates that draw like that… and they are 19! :smiley:

I wasn’t saying YOU are too hard on them, but some people tend to get a little obsessive when it comes to performance, so I said it just to be sure :wink:

By th way, I learned something interesting today: did you know that adults have a view of 160 to 180 degrees, but that the view of children is actually smaller? It starts at almost nothing, and steadly gets wider when the child ages. Kids do not have “full view” untill they are about 14 years old. It’s not that important (unless they want to draw landscapes, maybe), but I thought it was funny :stuck_out_tongue:

#29

I have two small children. I have been an artist for years freelancing and what-not. I have recently have began working with a very, very talented and gifted artist, and an old friend, on developing new and amazing ideas to put into 3D.

While he and I are drawing, my kids draw with us. One day while creating some amazing piece of work my son (10) looked at him and said how do you draw so good?

Damon replied, “Murder your darlings”.

My son said “What?”, trying to understand what he meant.

Instantly, Damon took his eraser and killed this AWESOME piece of drawing he had been working on for a while.

My son looked at him in wonder…and said “Why did you do that!?”

Damon replied “Because when you fall in love with a drawing and you are not willing to rework the piece, it loses it’s greatness”.

My son instantly understood exactly what he meant. Then my son later asked “How do you draw the way you do?”

Damon replied, “My father would put down Michaelangelo works in front of me and tell me to draw those.” Damon went on to explain “If you want to be able to draw great, you have to understand what great means”.

My son later that week picked up a book from the library of Michaelangelo artwork and began trying to recreate it.

My son later asked Damon “What can I do to be a better drawer?”

Damon said “Study from the best, like your dad, and the old masters.”

My son later asked, “How can I draw faces as good as yours?”

Damon replied “Sit down with your dad and draw his face while he draws yours”, then if you want to understand how the pieces of a face fit together, but a picture of someone’s face in half…tape that to a larger piece of paper and draw the other half."

I learned more from that session then I had in my life.

If you want to teach your children how to draw, then don’t be afraid to tell them what isn’t working as well as not being afraid to tell them what IS working.

They want to hear what makes them good as well as what they need to work on.

#30

Sanne-Chan:

Wierd! I’ve never heard that before. Can you point me towards somewhere I can read more about that? That explains some things I’ve noticed about children : )

The wave:

excellent anecdotes. I love the “murder your darlings” part. I’ve always told my students to do that, though I never had such a macabre phrasing for it. You have to let go of that part of the drawing that you love so much, or soon the whole thing centers around that one part, and it becomes difficult to progress. My brothertold me something that has always stuck with me, and that was, “once you mess up a piece (of art), its the most liberating thing in the world, because now you can do anything you want to it. It usually turns out better than the piece you’d originally envisioned” or something like that. I personally feel like a piece cannot be condsidered finished until I have completely reworked it at least 2 or 3 times.

Unah in particular gets very frustrated. She’s upset that she cannot draw like me. To which I reply, “if you could draw like me, I wouldn’t need to be here teaching you.” I try to get them to accept where they are at, so that they can move forward. She draws for a couple minutes and then dramatically leans back and exclaims “its TERRIBLE! I’ll never draw good!! wahhhhh!” Nevermind the fact that the drawing is already beautiful, and just needs more work. They are both very talented and creative, which is why I was excited to teach them. Instead I get a lot of resistance from them, like you often do between children and teachers. How do I get them to look up to me and learn willingly? I think that one problem is that its only once a week. I wish I had the time to go over there more often.

#31

Apparantly that is why they fail at truely understanding perspective as well as the fact that the neurological “wiring” is not yet fully developed. I’ll see of I can find some articles on that. But as you observed so well here:

Unah in particular gets very frustrated. She’s upset that she cannot draw like me. To which I reply, “if you could draw like me, I wouldn’t need to be here teaching you.” I try to get them to accept where they are at, so that they can move forward. She draws for a couple minutes and then dramatically leans back and exclaims “its TERRIBLE! I’ll never draw good!! wahhhhh!” Nevermind the fact that the drawing is already beautiful, and just needs more work. They are both very talented and creative, which is why I was excited to teach them. Instead I get a lot of resistance from them, like you often do between children and teachers. How do I get them to look up to me and learn willingly? I think that one problem is that its only once a week. I wish I had the time to go over there more often.

they * crave * to understand it and get very frustrated when they don’t. The drawing of endless details, like mentioned earlier in this thread seems to be a * vital * stage in their ability to observe the world correctly. They are attempting to go from symbolism - the circle that represents nearly everything - to true observation.

A suggestion to counter the frustration (directly from Betty Edwards). Draw a few simple cubes in perspective and let them copy your drawing, without explaining the theory. The guidelines/grid suggested in Drawing on the Right Side might help a great deal. I’m not sure, I’ve never tried it with children that young.
The chapter on visual development in children (and as I understand it also the grid/guideline method), is included in the NEW Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

This is a very interesting and educational thread!

#32

I wouldn’t worry too much about the Wahhhh! My son and nieces roll that out every so often and it helps to remember that they are developing on several levels simultaneously -not only gaining and exploring skills in art, social, cognitive and physical areas but emotional as well. Some of the wahhh! factor is ‘real’ as they learn to resolve situations and develop new skills but some is just a fascination with emotions and a discovery of themselves. I second the emphasis on fun, mix it up, break out some clay let them sculpt one day, paint another as they will still discover commonalities of form, texture etc. In fact maybe you can take a page from the daily sketch forum and have themes i.e. “this is monkey week” and let them explore everything from paper bag puppets, to jungle scenes, clay monkeys, to illustrating a monkey story to watching toons with monkeys. Maybe this broader focus on a subject but allowing them to express and ‘discover’ it in different ways would be helpful?

#33

“Why is everybody else but me having cool stuff to do!!??!!”

#34

“kill your darlings”

 *gulp*

I can’t do that… I redraw a certain piece if I think I could’ve done it better, but I do keep them , even if it’s just for comparisment. It’s fun to lay my pictures next to eachother on a table and see how much better the new one is. Then, I put them both in a plastic sheet and look at them again a few months later to laugh at the difference.
Ithink that might also be a good idea for kids. Finish the drawing, write the date on it and look at it again later, so they can see how much better they have become. It’ll boost their confidence. Besides that, I don’t know how sensitive YOUR pupils are, but if I was nine and someone made me erase my drawing of Goku from DragonballZ (don’t ask… :wink: ), I would cry and hide under my bed for the next five weeks.
Then again, I’m a wimp :stuck_out_tongue:

P.S. I saw that thing on kids viewrange on tv, but I don’t remember the channel. It was Dutch, I believe. Anyway, they found this one out when trying to see why kids get hit by cars so much. Yes, especially younger kids get distracted by basically everything with a shadow, but they’re not stupid. A child of 10 should be able to pay attention to the enviroment and get out of the way when traffic arives (unless it’s going really fast of course). Still, they get A LOT more accidents. So much, that you can’t blame their short attention span. That’s why people started to investigate and eventually found out that their view takes a lot of time to develop. That’s why children under 14 are way more likely to be hit by a car, simply because they can not see it coming until it’s too late. :sad:

#35

Here is a great link (Mark Kistler)for kids to learn to draw. It may seem hokey to us adults but he has some amazing ways for you to look at things. And I am sure they will start to expand on what they will learn from these books and his videos/dvds. The thing I think is cool is he talks to the kids on their level. Things they will understand.

I remember watching his pbs show and thinking-wow…I never thought to look at things so simply.

Hope this works. My 9 and 7 year old are into drawing and I have tons of how to draw books that I let them use. How to draw animals, monsters, people, and just about anything I can find on breaking drawings to simple shapes.

#36

Just a quick 2 cents worth. But I’d say, don’t even think about the vocabulary words for everything. I think they’ll be much more likely to be able to pick it up if you show them visually, which I’m sure you’re doing. But just possibly try to concentrate on visual examples and having them repeat those, instead of spending 20 minutes trying to teach them the conceptual differences between horizontal, vertical and diagonal. I’m sure once they can repeat what you’re talking about they will be much more likely to grasp the technical terms for everything.

#37

Thanks For the link Dagar! I’ll take a look at those : )

#38

Im inclined to agree with you there. I would just lose them when I tried to get them to understand concepts. Now I just try to get them to have fun with it and enjoy it.

#39

It’s so great that you teach these girls drawing from such a small age. I wish I could turn back time of my youth and start drawing a little earlier, and, most importantly, with much more vigor. People, generally, get their talents along with their life, with their first breath. However, developing this talent is not something that is given. That was my problem early on: I’ve been way too lazy to work a lot on my early works, I was switching my interests too often (one day I’m all into 3dsmax, the other day i’m drawing portraits, etc), never really concentrating on something. And I’ve never had a tutor, so in my case self-discipline was so much more needed than to some who attend art-schools and the like.

I believe that no teacher, no matter how great, cannot imbue his student with a talent. However, it is the teacher’s duty to keep his student on track, to keep him motivated, and discipline him, make him motivate himself, and not being lazy in his studies. The rest will come naturally, through practice.

Anyways, I wish you and your apprentises well!