Going from “Looking" to "Thinking"

     Before we discuss how to teach your child to look at a painting, first consider: "Why even show paintings to children?”

 From the perspective of knowledge, children in this information age can easily and quickly learn all kinds of knowledge from computers and a variety of other media. Because of this, they can express themselves knowledgeably and smoothly, and seem very smart.

The task of the new era of visual art education is to develop visual intelligence and to inspire intelligent viewing ability by using famous paintings. The importance of the "visual thinking" course in the United States has been greatly improved for over 10 years, through teaching art that promotes multi-level thinking. This advanced method of thinking is especially aware of emotion, so that people have the ability to master their own minds, know their own ideas, grasp the contents of their minds, modes, and directions of thinking, and have the ability to self-examination.

From observing newspapers and magazines featuring children’s paintings, we can see that a lot of works have a common feature: children's passion and patience to create amazing paintings. In addition to including all the characters, even trivial small details are carefully added. Unfortunately a picture is only so big. Crowding on too much content, shape, and color makes the whole picture cluttered, losing a sense of beauty.
 

You might imagine ink painting to be very difficult, because Chinese painting places too much emphasis on the power of strokes. You may be turned off because you feel you lack the ability to draw. In fact, times have changed; people’s way of life have changed dramatically. Of course, ideas, views and even the music we listen to are all different, so the image of painting will follow this change.

In a completely modern and technologically urbanized environment, the "colors" that children see every day are quite different compared to those of their parents. Modern cities everywhere are filled with commercial signs and advertising billboards. Everyday on the way to school and everyday life, we pass by a multitude of colorful signs that leave visual impressions, using a multitude of colors. T

The change in colors that can be created by each other is really boundless, seeing as the universe is a massive palette. With nature as the color magician and the universe with various colors and light as inexhaustible pigment, there can be all kinds of color interlaced in the universe. Regardless whether human eyes can see or comprehend it, this large palette is busy, with everything in modulation of color. Looking between an apparently simple two-color gradient, there are countless levels of color; but if we attempted to mix our own colors, we could never achieve anything as vivid as a natural gradient. However, what we can achieve by mixing in our palettes is a heightened color ability.

Van Gogh's artistic style is very special, general strokes revolving around like the wind. Whether it is the sky, clouds, or the light of the moon and stars, his art has a common use of stacked powerful short strokes, until the entire canvas is covered with whorls. Compared to Van Gogh, Picasso’s style was nearly childish. It was often a few strokes sketched out the shape of the object, appearing almost as simple as the art of a child. If in constant contact, whether from a book or an art museum, a two-year-old child can clearly identify the strong emotional strokes of Van Gogh, or Picasso's childishly drawn shapes and symbols. Of course, if a child has no such contact or experience with art, it is impossible and unbelievable that a child would have this ability.

 In Eastern meals, soup is the last and most fanciful dish. However, in Western culture, soup is the first dish, served as an appetizer. There are eating styles, each ingenious and with a taste; why would art be any different?

If you spread out a pile of confetti, the first thing a child is attracted to is the bright color. From a physiological and visual structure viewpoint, the development of vision in infants will be difficult. Without sufficient color education to form cognitive coordination of the middle color or tertiary colors and stimulate the sustainable development of vision training, a child will remain only capable of identifying with and using these so-called "bold" colors, and as a result, lack an understanding of color beauty even into old age. Like eating only McDonald's fast food, one will never experience using refined tastebuds to appreciate Chinese cuisine.

Sketching is usually used to train accurate observation performance and professional painting skills. After the middle and high school age, it is essential to understand the concept of proportion, light, and shade. Then, anyone can go through a fixed method of training, and learn to create more accurate and life-like drawings.

How should parents and teachers appreciate and interpret children's paintings? The only tactic is to concede our own opinions. By giving up our adult expectations, and maintaining a positive attitude while accepting the novelty of a child's art, we must change our mindset such that everything children present in front of us is welcome, with no rejection or criticism.

Modeling a mischievous leopard that is rushing out from the background of the right. Unfortunately the subject only takes up space on the right side, so Wen Shuo added a line for the ground, dead trees, snowflakes, and night on the left side of the paper.

One of the biggest problems in modern education is that parents don’t know or don’t believe that their children have talent. When asked in registration questionnaires whether they believe their children have talent, ninety-nine percent of parents with 3 to 4-year-old children leave this question blank.

What children of today see is no doubt completely different from that which existed in ancient times. Because of the different resources, and with modern scientific and technological breakthroughs expanding the visual, drawings by children of the twenty-first century vary greatly from what people of the previous generation imagine in their minds.

At first glance of their child's paintings, many parents immediately judge them to be unsatisfactory of or unacceptable by their own standards. However, it is never a good idea to express this opinion aloud, directly to their child.

 Doctor Maxine Greene, a professor of educational philosophy at Columbia University, once said that “works of art do not by themselves uncover their deep connotations nor do they immediately reveal themselves to their viewers”.

“How long will it take for my child to learn to draw or paint?” This is one of the most common questions that parents express concerning art classes. The same question is asked about piano: “How long will it take my child to learn to play piano?”