Art is divided into two categories; skills and
appreciation.
The library and/or Wikipedia have many resources for
studying famous Artists and their works. You don’t have to study them in
chronological order, though it may help your children to keep them in place historically
better if you do (adding them to a timeline would help this also).
Then again, pursuing your and their interests (studying all
horse or soldier painters for example) may bring enough extra benefits to
outweigh keeping everything in Historical prospective. As always, experiment
and see what works best for you.
Easy Peasy has links to free resources that teach appreciation, also.
Most people have been taught in school and the
media that art skills are things some people are born with and most people are
hopeless at.
This is not entirely true. Some lucky people are born with a
natural knack for art, this much is true.
But art SKILLS are just that, skills.
Just like any other skills they can be learned by anyone willing to take the
time and effort to learn them. Can you write your own name? Then you can learn
to draw.
I have used both Drawing With Children and the Drawing
Textbook with my children. Drawing with Children teaches the “Alphabet of
drawing” (lines; straight and curved and, circles; squashed or not) and how to
look and really see how things look (not how they ARE,
how they LOOK).
For example, the
top of a box is square, but it usually looks like a squished diamond. The top of a cake IS a circle, but it LOOKS like an oval (how
flat depends on the angle you are looking at it from. This is called
foreshortening).
The Drawing Textbook (my favorite of the
two) is a set of simple lessons teaching the rules of perspective, the
“Grammar” of drawing, if you will. It begins with drawing a TV and progresses
to a complex cityscape. Very simple and only $10.00.
The library is likely to
have the first book as well as other good resources to teach drawing with. I
wouldn’t expect the second book to be there. It is available at Amazon and
Lampost.com.
There are also art teachers with videos on Youtube and some lovely curriculums available on the internet now. Check our Cathy Duffey's reviews.
The main key with drawing, though, is the same as with writing;
If you want to be an author, write something every
day.
If you want to be an artist, draw something every
day.
Be patient with yourself and your children. It takes time to get better.
DRAWING RULES
1.
Things smaller and/or higher look far away.
2.
Dark things
look closer than light things.
3.
Overlap
objects to make one look closer than the other.
4.
Shade the side of an object away from the light.
Painting
is a different skill than drawing (you form shapes instead of outlining and you
start in the back and work your way forward, while in drawing you start in the
front and work your way back), but it isn’t really any harder. You can paint
without knowing how to draw. Again most libraries as well as the internet have
videos and books that teach painting, but the main thing to do in order to
learn is to do it regularly.
I assume sculpting is the same, though I don’t
have nearly the experience with that medium.
Summary:
- Learn to recognize the ”alphabet” of drawing in everything.
- Learn the “Grammar” of drawing (perspective).
- Draw, draw, draw.
