Noticing the Details

October 17th
For me, drawing has always been a meditative experience.  As a shy child, most of my 'choice' time in Kindergarten was spent at the painting easel.  My dad used to bring my brothers and I stacks of one-sided paper from work, and we would spend hours drawing together.  When I was a teenager, my mom pulled garbage bags of old drawings that I thought had long since disappeared out of our crawl space upstairs.  For me, drawing was a way of exploring my inner self.  It calmed me and allowed me to be quiet and reflective.

Obviously not all children feel the same way about drawing and painting, and many would rather dance, build structures or play soccer.  These days, I view drawing as a way for young children to communicate their ideas, when written language is still somewhat limited.  Currently, most of my students choose to draw in their sketch books during quiet time.  Some are beginning to play collaborative games on paper,  while others spend their time diligently working on observation drawings of the beach, shelves in the classroom or interesting objects from our Science corner.  We have been running an after-school club, and I lead an art class on Wednesdays.  Last week, I took the children outside with view-finders to draw alone in an outdoor space.  One little boy chose the plum tree to sit in, while others sat on the rocky beach and drew the islands in the distance.  Another lay in the grass and carefully drew a row of trees in magnificent detail.  One little girl discovered that she could use a leaf as carbon paper and another child worked on an observation drawing of all his friends.   The following week, we warmed up with free line drawings using graphite sticks.  I challenged the children to use only their fingers to draw with, then their wrists, elbows and whole arms.  Once they had warmed up, I took out mirrors and asked the kids to look closely at their faces.  I asked them to tell me what they noticed, and the answers ranged from the colour of their eyes, to the tiny pores on their cheeks.  One Kindergarten student spent a good portion of the afternoon drawing tiny pores in pencil, as well as a small scar that he noticed under his left eye.  Another chose to do a separate portrait of his body with a sword down the centre.  The energy that young children can achieve in their drawings is impressive, and it saddens me that this freedom often gets lost along the way as we begin striving for perfection.  For me, true beauty lies in odd angles, and bold strokes.