When Children Draw

I had the privilege of participating in Ang INK’s latest exhibit called Guhit, Bulilit, Guhit! (Draw, Kiddo, Draw!) ~

I didn’t know it was going to be called that when they let me know about the show (thank you, Rex) ~ they just said ‘children and art’, and I can be, um, quite literal about these things, sometimes (read: I have no imagination 😅 )

I got to go to the opening and I was very glad to see some actual kiddles there (it always strikes me how there are more grownups at these things than the kiddles we’re supposed to be illustrating for). It looked as though they’d had a workshop or two where they had actual kiddles draw and it was nice to see what the kiddles came up with 😊
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Drawing was a fact of life in the house I grew up in ~

~ like eating or taking a bath, or sleeping, like that. It was just something you did like watching TV, or reading. One of my earliest memories was drawing on the wall and being made to clean it, I think I was about two or three.

Drawing as a kid for me was kind of like an ‘in and out’ process for me ~ as I’m sure I’ve said on the jillablog before, I would ‘send my brain’ or my consciousness into the ‘dimension of the paper’ and bring out whatever was in it, onto the paper. That way, I could see with my actual, physical eyes whatever I saw in my mind’s eye. I was making those things ‘real’ for myself.

Hence, the mermaid cities and fairies and such. I didn’t start making unicorns until I was about 12; in any case, I guess it was important to me. And when I figured out that it was something that helped me to, get by, I guess, at school, it was all the more incentive to just keep doing it.

I mean let’s face it ~ when you’re not the prettiest, smartest, sportiest, or prom queen, you gotta have something that ‘makes you useful’ to the folks who were (and that’s how you ‘survive’ until graduation).

I really did love to draw, for all that, and I did want to become better at it ~ also because it was something you could do for your Mom’s or Dad’s or whoever’s birthday, that kind of thing. Like you wanted to give them the nicest thing you could possibly make (and with any luck, elicit a curt word of praise).

And again, call it escapism or whatever but I also did sometimes end up making little stories in my head to go with my ‘drawrings’.

So I guess, maybe, that’s what it must be like for the kiddles now, or other kiddles, when they draw, too.
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My seven-year-old niece recently blew my mind ~ ​

~ with her little notebook full of cats. She had an Egyptian cat and a cat with a flower growing out the top of its head, a cat that robbed banks (she seemed to have a fixation on those for some reason lol) and a cat that was into food ~ she had a page per cat and she pretty much filled the notebook with it.

I thought that was far more clever than the newsprint pad with blue and red lines that I filled when I was in third grade (so I was about eight) where I drew all these dolls and gave them all names, and the ones I thought were pretty had the prettier names and the ones that had ‘great personalities’ had not-so-pretty names. (Lame.)

Another related memory: Two other nieces a few years back, a few years older than my ‘cat niece’ ~ one was my cousin’s daughter and the other my other brother’s daughter. I sort of gave them a semi-impromptu art class online (hmm, must’ve been during the pandemic).

I think we were doing that ‘draw with crayon then paint over the lot with watercolour’ thing (AKA wax resist). My cousin’s daughter drew a mermaid. My brother’s daughter drew a sunken pirate ship with a shark ~ if I remember right (or it might be just me) the shark was eating something (someone?). In any case, I remember enjoying that immensely (the shark eating someone?).
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I think it’s just so important to let kids draw and explore ~ ​

~ and work their imagination like that. I did spend quite a few years running art classes for kids that way and it didn’t take much for me to tap back into that part of my brain that never really outgrew that whole ‘drawing as a kid’ thing.

But even as a(n unlicensed) teacher I knew that letting kiddles draw was good for them. I remember we had a whole bunch of reasons in our marketing materials for parents (one of them was developing fine motor skills in case you wanted your kid to be a brain surgeon ~ for art in general, not just drawing). I don’t remember-remember, but, yeah.

Which is why I was so dismayed by yet another related memory: hearing about someone who didn’t want to let his kid draw at all, as in no crayons, no markers, no nothing, because he didn’t want his kid to ‘become a wimp’ (so basketballs and baseball bats, but no art or anything like that).

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that slice; for my part I rather feel like, well I’m thinking Miss Hannigan, haha.

So I’m no educator or child psychologist, just someone who remembers ~

~ the sheer, dare I say pure joy (in spite of school) of drawing as a kid, and what that did for me. For one brief shining moment, i.e. while I was drawing, I was mistress of my own universe, I was completely lost in that ‘other dimension’ (two-dimensional, I grant you, but it was more than enough for me). I was happy.

And, maybe I was, I don’t know. Growing feathers, I guess, little by little until I became a full-fledged whatever I am or trying to be today.

And it has served me well, I daresay, professionally, even in my ‘legitimate work’ or my day job; in any case, my drawing skills have proven useful even when they weren’t being used for art. They’ve taught me to use what brains God has given me and, again, in that sense, helped me to live to my current ripe old age.

So as a more, current, shall we say, reflection on children drawing ~ that’s also why it’s so important to let kiddles draw ‘the old fashioned way’, i.e. without something else doing their thinking for them. That’s just me the Luddite speaking, I guess, but even if they use a tablet or their phone, let kiddles form their own lines and shapes and put in their own colours.
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In any case, what I really love about kiddles drawing is the purity. ​

The younger the kiddles drawing, the better. I do so love the innocence of these drawings, like how the kiddles just enjoy making them without worrying about whether they were any good or anything. I especially love how a drawing can literally be anything even if it doesn’t look anything like the something a kiddle says it’s supposed to be.

Okay some kiddles’ drawings I’m not crazy about ~ when they draw like cartoon characters or whatever, but, being a dinosaur I can’t tell when they do, anymore, anyway. Anyway they can’t help themselves, and, it’s not like I was never influenced that way growing up (or I wouldn’t have made all those crossed googly eyes) (or drawings of Optimus Prime 😍).

I’m also not crazy about what we used to call ‘M’ mountains or ‘V’ birds or the infamous stick-figure humans (although I do tolerate ‘cloud trees’ LOL) ~ but I think those are the result of another kind of influence which I’m not qualified nor disposed to go into here.

But I remember, for example, one of my little boy students who drew a piece of toast and put a face and arms and legs on it ~ that sort of thing kills me ❤️ As in I just can’t get enough 😘
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Kiddles grow up so fast. Before you know it, they won’t draw like that anymore. ​

Hopefully, that’s because they’ll draw ‘better’ (however you want to define that) or ‘develop’. Sadly, inevitably, the filters that come with growing up just won’t let them see things and translate them into drawings the same way.

So I guess there’s this like, window where drawing is just so important and you gotta encourage it while you can ~ if only for the, I don’t know. ‘Development’ and ‘creativity’ part. And if you can, you just gotta save all those drawings because there’ll come a time when they just won’t make those, that way, anymore. The magic will be gone.

Hopefully replaced by a different kind. But thaaat magic will have died out.

With so many good things in the world dying out now, I’m truly hoping and praying that that magic of a child drawing never will.