Artist Intelligence of an 8 year old

Do you remember the fun you had back in infant school when it was time to bring out your paints and pencils to draw or paint something?

Remember the fun of getting the paint to do all sorts of cool things?

Well it was probably before the age of 8 that you had the most fun with art, that is unless you were one of the lucky ones to be held up high and praised for your artwork.

If you can remember the way things worked out it was probably something like the following.

Good artwork got praise from the teacher and other classmates, and the rest just got ignored. We all love to praise things of beauty and when it comes to a painting or a drawing it is no different.

Did your drawing gain praise or ridicule? Did you do the drawing of the teacher or a friend that was a good likeness, that everyone though was good? Or did you just get ignored as your drawing was not all that much like your subject?

It is around about the age of 8 that we begin to take notice of what others think about what we do. This includes our awareness of whether we are perceived to be a "good drawer" or not.

Those of us who are shunned for our seeming lack of ability to represent someone's face in a realistic manner, pretty much decide there and then that "we cannot draw" or "I am no good at drawing".

We then take that awareness one step further and reassure ourselves that it is OK not to be able to draw, as we are not an artist. With this we step back from pursuing any art education that would give rise to a greater ability or artistic intelligence.

So when I see grown adults trying to draw a person, it is usually to the ability of an 8 year old because that is where they left off back in the 3 rd grade.

Imagine if we applied the same rule to "reading" or "writing". We would face a very handicapped life if that were the case, and for an unfortunate majority in under developed countries this remains the case for all of their lives. Whereas we in the west have access to education that helps us to take our raw intelligence and build it into a reliable resource for our own betterment and support of our needs through employment or some business related activity.

With education drawing skills can be transfered from one individual to another. Just like learning to read or write, drawing can be taught and everyone can learn. That is right I said everyone. It doesn't take someone with special gifted hands to draw or paint, just look at the folks that have learned to do it with their feet or mouths. It lies in the artistic intelligence that we all have inside us, nurtured into an expression that reveals so many things to us about what we actually see in this world of ours.

So yes you can learn to draw, and you can draw better than an 8 year old, you just need to pick up where you left off and there is really nothing you cannot draw.

Next post, where do you go to learn to draw?