Yesterday, my daughter sketched a character in under two minutes, then tried to hide it when I complimented her. She said it was crap. It only took her two minutes.
We made eye contact. I asked, “Do you remember the first drawing you made that showed humans?”
“No,” she admitted, after thinking about it.
She gave me a blank page, so I could draw an approximation. At four or five years of age, she would draw something akin to a square with stick legs and stick arms. The eyes were always circles with dots in the middle and super long spider-leg lashes. People always had big smiles, and sometimes, she’d draw horizontal lines between the legs to show striped clothes.
She’d make little ones (her) next to big ones (me). I showed her my copy of her earliest work and said, “This is where you started,” then I had her open up back to her two minute “crap” sketch. “It may have only taken you two minutes to draw that, and it may not look as good as the pieces you spend an hour or two on, but it took you twelve years to be able to draw a ‘crap’ sketch that looks that good.”
I paused, and made sure she was really listening.
“Art is a journey. You’re always growing, changing, and improving. Your style now isn’t the style you had at four, and it’s not the style you had two years ago. Enjoy the journey, make art. This isn’t crap.”
My daughter’s still trying to unlearn the competitive lessons from elementary school. My son wants everything to be a competition with his sister; he wants to fight bad guys (and sometimes good guys) and win. I want them to learn to love the journey of discovery, development, and dedication.
Willow and Birch 