What Can a Young Artist Learn in Three Hours?
Three hours. One Zoom art lesson. And every single mark is hers.
This amazing 10-year-old young artist already loved art and wanted to extend her skills. The drawings accompanying this post show her progress from the very beginning to the end of one three-hour online Zoom lesson with me.
Nobody has touched or altered her drawings. I was on the other side of a screen throughout. Every line, every observation and every decision belongs to her.
Then, immediately after the lesson, she drew her mum independently, taking that new understanding and beginning to apply it for herself.
Teaching children to see, rather than guess
For me, this is not about teaching a child to copy my artwork or giving them a collection of rigid rules to follow.
It is about teaching them how to truly see.
I describe the foundations I teach as the grammar, spelling and punctuation of art. Just as understanding language gives us the freedom to express our own thoughts, understanding the foundations of art gives an artist more freedom to express their own ideas.
How does light describe form? Why does a shadow make something appear three-dimensional? What is the eye actually receiving, and how does the brain interpret that information?
Once those things begin to make sense, drawing becomes less about guessing what we think something should look like and more about observing what is actually there.
There isn't one 'right' kind of artwork
This is also something I feel very strongly about.
I will praise a good cartoon for being a good cartoon. I will praise a good still life for being a good still life. I will praise a good portrait for being a good portrait. If an artist wants to create something highly realistic or almost photographic, that is another perfectly valid choice.
One is not automatically more important, more artistic or more valuable than another.
The important word is choice.
Sometimes young artists, and adults too, simply don't realise how many choices are available because nobody has given them the underlying knowledge.
Once they understand how light, shade, form, perspective, colour and visual perception work, they can choose what to use, what to exaggerate, what to simplify and even what to ignore.
Helping an artist become their own teacher
Knowledge should not dictate what somebody's artwork looks like. It should give them greater freedom to decide.
When a student understands why something works, something particularly exciting begins to happen. They can question, experiment and solve problems without constantly needing someone else to tell them what to do next.
They begin to become their own teacher.
That is where their own artistic style can really begin to develop… their ideas, their artwork and their dreams, rather than learning to reproduce mine or anybody else's.
Learning art online or in Cornwall
This transformation happened entirely online through Zoom in just three hours, demonstrating how much can be achieved when a lesson focuses on understanding rather than copying.
I teach children, teenagers and adults online, as well as face-to-face in Cornwall, including art lessons at Mawgan Porth through Art At The Beach. My teaching is designed to give artists the fundamental knowledge they can carry into their own artwork, whatever medium or style they eventually choose.
Knowledge gives us choices. Understanding gives us freedom.
