Simple pencil/marker/watercolor design for kids

We started a new class this month and I am going back to the basics with this new crew of students. One of the main things that I encourage them to do when they are starting out is to create a failsafe for themselves. As children they are encouraged to use crayons or markers but the problem with this approach is that once you swipe, you cannot unswipe. The mark is there forever. IF you follow these steps I have found that students tend to stay more interested in producing art, and they can always change it right up to the point where we get the paint involved, which is the last step.

I do an little example and just do an outline of a city street or a house or really anything. Cities are easy to do at first because everyone can do right angles. Things get more complicated when we start talking about drawing people so that is why I encourage people to not be at all concerned about making their people realistic. I tell them to imagine them as if they were in a dream... hazy and nearly unrecognizable.

Interpretation of art is largely up to the person that is viewing it, so if you get too specific with details it eliminates wonder... that isn't exactly true and is kind of a little white lie that I tell students because drawing a realistic person is really difficult to do especially if you have never done it before.

We use heavy paper and I encourage a lot of erasing. It is important to not press down too hard on the paper because you need to be able to easily change it. Once you are satisfied with your outline we move on to the marker. This is where you need a steady hand because there is no erasies allowed from this point forward.

After all of that we add some simply watercolors. We use watercolors because they are cheap and because there is no reason to be throwing expensive oil paints at kids who are probably going to get it on their clothes anyway. Some might try to eat it. Also, watercolors are very cheap so if they decide they want to do this at home their parents will probably happily comply.

When doing the initial run with the watercolors, we don't want to go over the lines too much, but we also done focus on keeping everything exactly in the lines. You need to create YOUR work, not a copy of someone else's.

Lastly we talk about shadowing, and how that creates a sort of realism in the 3rd picture as opposed to the 2nd. Some of the students went a bit overboard with this and were happier with the 2nd stage and this is all part of the process. I lead them down this path, but ultimately it is up to them to discover what they are good at and what they are interested in. If everyone just did exactly what I did, there would be no art... everything would just look the same and that is boring.

These exercises are designed to simply give kids a bit of confidence and I will be closely watching them in the coming weeks to see who is interested and who is developing. In what way, I can't say nor is it my place to try to mold them. What I try to accomplish is to simply open the artistic door a crack and then see if the student themselves are interested enough to open it the rest of the way. What is contained on the other side is completely unique and wonderful, and that is what makes art so special.