Right Brain Drawing Lessons for Children

Most young children don't need to be encouraged to draw. They just need a crayon. By age 10, however, many children become disinterested in drawing. Some of these children develop interests in new things, while others become increasingly frustrated by the pictures they are producing and eventually give up. The latter group's ability to discern the quality of their art advances as they grow, yet their artistic abilities stand still. Betty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, offers the most compelling insight into the reasons why artistic abilities stop short for many children.

Edwards says our knowledge of how the brain works shows us that the left and right hemispheres of our brain manages information in different ways. The left hemisphere manages the logical processes like numbers and language. The right hemisphere perceives and creates. By the age of five or six the processes of the left hemisphere become the focus for development in young children when they enter elementary school. The right hemisphere, the side that is right for drawing, unfortunately becomes somewhat ignored. The left brain, which isn't any good at drawing, finally takes over by the age of ten, repressing the right brain at every opportunity. As a result, children are left with a system for drawing that the logical left brain can manage. The symbols children create for eyes, houses, and trees, become elements in the drawings they create. Each drawing includes the same symbols, unaltered by the changing subjects for their drawings. The left brain is not interested in what it sees, only what it remembers. The repressive nature of the left brain can, in turn, lead teenagers to wonder why their drawings still look the same as they did when they were eight. The explanation can be found in the left brain's obsession to manage every task - even when it cannot.

The good news is that those special abilities that are unique to the right brain can be developed, and the artist in all of us can be drawn out.

The following lessons from the MakingArtFun.com website are based on Betty Edwards research. They are carefully planned, kid-friendly lessons that will help children see what they really see, rather than relying on a symbol system. Once they begin to see the world as it really is, they will begin to have success as artists like never before.

10 Drawing Lessons
Each lesson is presented in sequence, and should be learned one after the other for optimum results.

1) Optical Illusion Vase
2) Fraggle Monster Vase
3) Picasso's The Dog
4) Picasso's The Butterfly
5) Matisse's La Pompadour
6) Soda Pop Straws
7) Does Negative Space Have a Shape?
8) Pure Contour Drawing
9) Draw a Face
10) Draw Johann Sebastian Bach