The Questions Parents Ask

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 264, 14 July 1944, Page 8

The Questions Parents Ask

| (Answered by

Herbert

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i At what age should children: start to draw? As soon as they can hold a pencilee: is usually at two and a-half years old. 2. Do children first show a feeling for ‘line, or composition, or colour? The stages are (1) scribble, at first aimnless,- gradually becoming purposive, age two to four; (2) line, used with visual control, from about the age of four; (3) composition, the placing of two or more objects within a given space, from about five. A feeling for colour seems to be present from the very beginning of the child’s artistic activity. 3. Do children start by drawing things they have seen or things they have imagined? | This is difficult to answer in simple _ language; I would rather say that children begin by drawing things they have felt; certainly in their early years visual impressions play almost no part in their drawings, and descriptive realism is rare before the age of seven or eight. 4. What types of subject do children of various ages most‘ frequently choose? Tt varies according to sex, age, environment, and also temperament. Taking the medium age of nine, one might say that boys draw most frequently vehicles of various sorts, houses, human beings and landscapes. in that order; whereas girls tend to draw human beings, flowers, houses, animals, in that order. But it is too difficult to generalise. 5, Do all children have some feeling for art? In my opinion, yes, unless they are suffering from a repression of this natural medium of communication. It is no more natural for a child not to draw than it is for a child not to speak: both are forms of dumbness, 6. What materials should you give your children for drawing and painting? An unlimited supply of coloured pencils, or crayons and decent paper. From the age of five, most children can use 4 brush and poster paints. Water-colour +z too difficult a medium for young children 7. Should varents suggest subjects tor children to draw, and {give therm things to copy? By all means suggest. subjects, but neve: give them things to copy until they begin to show a desire to draw from nature, pany | will not be before the age of nine or 10. 8. If your child is particularly interested in painting,. and seems talented, should you expect him to be an artist when grown-up? I expect every child to become an artist of some sort, whether it is an engineer, a weaver, or a bank clerk, and sume may become professional painters. But ic the present economic system it is » poor of profession, and to encourage a to take it up may be to condemn that child to a life of penury and despair. It is better to express artistic sensibility in some vocation which is securely into the prevailing economic system. Even exceptional geniuses such as chelangelo have done this--as an 9 At what age do most children lose * their interest in painting? e Under the existing educational system when they get caught in the treadmili of examinations. A change in the child’s teaction to experience does take place, between the ages of 10 and 11, but it is not necessarily accompanied by a withering of the aesthetic sensibility. _ 10, Should children be shown the work * of established artists? If so, what Y A gpg =F should be ut it not Siew dtr gy thing is to ni t and worth dnl oF akstor’ teoers masters. purpose of art in educa-