Many times I have encountered this query from parents, who love art and feel that their child should be able to make beautiful art pieces. They could then display them in the house and decorate their rooms etc. I totally empathize with the parents as looking at an art piece created by your child does bring a sense of pride. Also, wonderful colourful pieces all around the house bring in so much joy too, isn’t it?

Well, yes your child can make nice art? The question here is what is your definition of nice art and what is your child’s definition?

Children use art to express. They use colours to to reproduce the world they see around them. Many times they are fascinated by multicolour pieces and they wish to colour anything and everything in rainbow colours. But if you as parent have a different taste in art, you may not appreciate what your child creates. But it’s artistic expression for your child. In such cases, I would suggest that rather than dismissing your child’s art, appreciate it. Acknowledge that he/she sees so much joy in the world and wants to express it with all the colours they see around.

Art has two sides one creative and one technical. When kids are small, their fine motor skills are not developed fully to hold the tools like pencil, crayon, brush in its best possible way to be able to create expected starlight lines or shapes or even colour the way we see ‘best’ art pieces on the internet. This is the time when rather than insisting them to make absolute straight line, one must encourage them to just create however they want. They need a lot of encouragement during this phase. They look at the world from their perspective and they want to show you everything they have created. Encourage their creativity and expression of the world.

As they grow older around 7 onwards, slowly encourage them to observe technicals aspects of art. But do not push them too hard. Show them subtle differences between their work and the actual work and channelize their observation to find the differences. The more they see the difference the sooner they will understand it and be able to recreate it next time. Even if their art pieces are slightly crooked, do not discourage them that they aren’t trying harder or why can’t they see how the lines should be.

The right age to push for technical efficiency is 12 onwards. By this time if you have given them lot of exposure to hone their creative side, it would be strong and helping them focus on technical side, won’t make them loose their creative side.

Your child if inclined towards art will keep creating one way or the other. It’s upto you and the teachers to acknowledge, appreciate and channelize slowly steadily towards helping them improve from their own previous piece. Purchase good quality tools and good quality colours for them as resources make a huge difference in the quality of pictures.

Love and Colours,

Bhakti

The author is an Artist and Art Educator at AasmaFilms – Academy of Arts and Stop Motion Animation Films Studio located at Baner, Pune. She conducts online as well as in-studio Art classes for kids and holds workshops for adults. She has had 2 Solo Exhibitions so far. She has been teaching Art and Stop motion animation to children since more than a decade.

You can reach out to her via Instagram AasmaFilms or email her at aasmaFilms @gmail.com