My Family

Another assignment from my Intro to Art class. We were supposed to look at some drawings that we or other kids did of people around age 4 or 5 and then draw a picture of our family as if we were that age! Haha! It was actually kind of fun! (Though I think I tried a bit too hard to make my handwriting look like it was done by a kid.) I was going to just submit this to Scraps, but decided not to… if for no other reason than to make a statement (the same one our art teacher gave when we turned this one in): When we have kids, and those kids start drawing and it comes out looking like this (let’s face it; amateurish, inaccurate, unrefined, etc.), what will we do? Will we ignore it because of its “poor” quality? Will we just smile and pat them on the head? Or will we praise them, encourage them to keep drawing, and maybe even give them some pointers? If we do the latter, they’ll come to view art as an important skill, and when they get older, they’ll be more likely to stick with it and continue to improve their skills. If we don’t, they may never learn by themselves what educators are now discovering is actually an important skill, and one that anyone can learn with enough practice.