mirkyj in the post "Drawabox, /r/ArtFundamentals and Reddit going forward. My plans for the future, and the chance to include you lot in on the discussion."

2018-05-19 17:19

Thanks for writing out such a detailed reply, I appreciate it even if I'd like to challenge your perspective a bit.

I'm going to try to characterize your perspective and I hope you don't think I'm being unfair. Let me know if I get it wrong but I think you are inserting a distinction between "Making art to have fun" vs. "Making art to become a better artist." You seem to also claim that before 12 or 13, kids can't really access the second one. Furthermore, elementary school art class is a respite for the task oriented drudgery of school, so not only is it not really developmentally appropriate, it would undermine one of the benefits of art class; namely providing kids a safe place to express themselves without the presence of criticism or rubrics. I think this is a reasonable perspective, and one shared by many people who don't work with kids regularly. Again, let me know if I mischaracterized you.

Here's the thing though: kids love working. Kids love working more than adults even. They are generally so unskilled at so many things, that not only is there a huge and satisfying learning curve after investing a minimal effort, but even the most basic feedback can inspire significant improvement. Without a doubt, my least successful art lessons are the ones where I let kids just be free and express themselves. Creativity is cultivated through limitations, not in spite of them.

As an example: when I introduce paint to kids, the first thing I do is give them black and white tempera, small paint brushes, and copy paper. I explain the craft of mixing colors, being intentional about choice of paper, and experimenting with how water effects the process. If they show me they can do all this, and clean up, the next day they unlock 1 primary color. We have a whole week of just white, black, and blue. The next week, one more primary color. When they have all three, I only let them unlock secondary colors when they have successfully made a color wheel using only primary colors. The message being I'll give you access to secondary colors once I prove to you that you can mix them yourself. For older kids there are avenues to unlock the privilege of better quality paints and paper, or to study more advanced techniques. For everyone, pre-K to 5, it is a full month of slowly progressing through a limited color palette before anyone even sees orange, purple, or green.

Now if I had just unlocked all the paint, told the kids that they can finally feel free to express themselves, it would be much less successful for everyone. Some kids would relish the opportunity, but those are the kids that would benefit most from direct instruction because they are already interested in painting. Most kids would almost immediately get bored, or overwhelmed with so many options, and would no longer be interested in developing craft, or expressing themselves.

I guess all of this is to say draw a box provides the same things that good teachers provide: a clear rubric for developing skills with opportunities for targeted feedback. What I'm envisioning isn't really about adding bells and whistles to get kids interested, or denying them the valuable freedom that happens during the increasingly rare sanctuary of an art class. Modifying draw a box to be for kids wouldn't take much more than simplifying the vocabulary and modifying the expectations to better align with well established developmental benchmarks.

Anyways, this is already way too long, but I wanted to give a full reply. Thanks for starting the conversation though.

mirkyj in the post "Drawabox, /r/ArtFundamentals and Reddit going forward. My plans for the future, and the chance to include you lot in on the discussion."

2018-05-08 15:12

This might be down the road but it would be so great to have something geared for younger kids. I'm an elementary art teacher and love the method but have terrible adapting lessons to be simpler