A Confession.

Okay, I'll admit something - very often, most of the time actually, I haven't got the slightest idea what's going to happen in my classes.

Oh, I go in there with an intention, a theme, even a project - but it's hanging out with the kids and seeing what's on their minds that really makes things go.

For example: The other day, I brought in a book on Disney animation because we had been trying to remember what Tinkerbell's hair looked like. But as soon as I got there, one of the kids pulled out his binder which had a picture of a bunny character on it that he called "Happy Bunny." So, we drew Happy Bunny for the rest of the hour. We colored him. We put outfits on him. I didn't even know the bunny existed before that.

I find teaching art is as much about being willing to receive ideas as being ready to give them. Because artistic expression is about getting heard and understood. So, I do a lot of hearing and understanding, and then I offer ways to get stuff down on paper. Or cut out. Or glued. Or whatever.

So, the most important thing I take with me to any drawing class isn't materials or a lesson plan, it's readiness to hear about what's interesting, and then turn that into ideas for projects. It might be a movie that just came out, or a picture on someone's binder, or even a t-shirt someone wore to school that day or a book they brought. But the result is something totally unique and spontaneous. So I guess I don't really teach creative material as much as creative thinking. Even though I show up with a project that we're not going to do.

If You Want to Write (or Draw or Sing or...)

I just finished this book by Brenda Ueland. She was a prolific writer and a teacher - and this book, though written way back in 1938, is often cited as the best book on creativity and the artistic spirit that you can read. I think this book can be life-changing. If you are either pondering your own creative path or are someone who inspires and teaches others, this book is a very important one. There are many books out there about creativity, including some that I will highlight here, but at the core many of them are re-stating what's in this book. This is one you want to stash in your nightstand.

The World's Shortest Post on Media and Behavior

Do media affect behavior?

Let me put it this way - if media did not affect behavior, there would be no advertising industry.

So the next time someone tries to tell you that media do not affect the feelings, thoughts and behavior of whoever is seeing and hearing them, child or grownup, just point out that maybe those billions of dollars that advertisers spend must be a complete waste. 'Cause clearly NO ONE has EVER changed what they do based on an advertisement.

Next.

P.S. Excellent Book: The Other Parent by James P. Steyer.

Is Coloring Art?

Yes. Next!

Just kidding. Okay, coloring a picture that is already drawn does not require creating shapes, or lines, or developing an idea from scratch. However, it's one of the quickest and easiest ways to foster a right-brain shift that I know of. Meaning, it can kick you into a peaceful, non-verbal, quiet sense of well-being as you interact with something that is purely visual.

I often draw things for kids to color. When my daughter was very small I would draw something for her, and she would basically obliterate it with a crayon as she went over it again and again - sometimes following the lines, sometimes coloring it in.

Online there are pretty much infinite things for kids to color - if your child has a favorite character, I guarantee there's a coloring page out there with that character on it. Just Google Dora or Arthur or Sesame Street or whatever and bingo.

Also, the newspaper funnies are a great thing to color. It's like having a coloring book delivered to your house every morning.

And again - if you don't want to drown in coloring pages, you can make an outline of something on a small white board and let kids color it in. There are even white board marker-friendly placemats that kids can color while they eat their cereal. My son has the Solar System.

So don't underestimate the value of interacting with a drawing by coloring it - many times a child is following the lines, getting to know the shapes, and encoding things in muscle memory. In full color!

Who cares about the food, how are the placemats?

I think restaurants are on to something. Now, being a person with kids means I eat at a lot of restaurants that hand out crayons when you sit down. Sometimes they also give you a puzzle, or a maze, and sometimes the kids' menu is in there somewhere. But the expectation is, there's gonna be drawing during dinner.

Even when we go to the nice restaurants, if they've got paper placemats, those are going to be drawn on. I'll pull out pencils and let the kids go for it.

Well, we've adopted this habit at home, too. We keep a cup of pencils or a package of pens on the table pretty much all the time. I used to think it was because I was really bad at getting the table cleared before dinner - now I realize that I'm doing that on purpose.

Having paper and pencils available is soothing. It accommodates the desire to just sit and make marks. I know many people like there to be a certain decorum at the table, and we do expect people to say "please" and sit on their chairs in between squirming.

But I find this blending of drawing and eating to be really interesting on a lot of levels. I hear from parents of older kids that it's easier to have a conversation with their child when he or she slightly distracted - maybe the TV is on, or you're driving somewhere - anything that is not a full-frontal conversation assault.

Sometimes thoughts flow more smoothly with my younger kids, too, when they have a pencil in their hand. We can talk about their day, or ask questions, and it's a little less stressful. I haven't done clinical studies here, I'm just offering an observation.

Maybe that's why all those old master painters did so many pictures of food.

Improv Everywhere - I love this.

This is by a group called Improv Everywhere. In it, they have a bunch of people freeze in place at Grand Central Station in New York, and then continue as if nothing happened.

I love this sort of thing because it jolts us out of our daily routine. In New York, this sort of thing probably doesn't phase people much. But look at all those people bustling about their daily business, suddenly stopping to wonder what's going on.

I think this is a great example of unleashing the creative beast.

(This video is kid-friendly. If you are a kid, and you click to YouTube from here, you better have the permission of your parents!)

Art - It's not just for test scores any more!

These days, the way you justify something in education is you show it improves test scores. So, for art to be valuable, it has to make kids better at math. Or reading. Or make them whizzes at multiple choice. In short, for art to be good for you, it has to make you better at NON-art things.

Huh?

What a bunch of poop.

Fortunately, there are great folks like The Wallace Foundation who make big documents proving that all to be hogwash. Since it's not likely you'll read a 104-page foundation report anytime soon, I'll summarize a really great one called "Gifts of the Muse - Reframing the Debate about the Benefits of the Arts."

What it says is:

The arts benefit us in a whole spectrum of ways, and we're ignoring a lot of it to our own detriment because we're hung up on test scores and economic growth... which make up only a tiny sliver of life experience.

Here's more of the spectrum:

- The arts create social bonds. We externalize our thoughts and feelings by making and looking at art and media. We tell people what is inside our heads and hearts.

- The arts create communal meaning. We get a shared vocabulary for our experiences. Napoleon Dynamite is a great example. So is Star Wars. So is Knuffle Bunny.

- The arts build a capacity for empathy. We see other people expressing themselves, and we are encouraged to do it too. We react to other people's art and we experience having others interpret our own ideas.

- The arts make you take responsibility for your actions. You make something, you decide if it's what you wanted, you start over or you turn it into something else. Nobody can decide this for you.

That's the super-short version. But I love the way they've framed it. Culture is not made out of money or test scores or college admissions. It's made out of shared experience and self-expression. Yay for the Wallace Foundation!

Funky Diagram - The Last Part

Alright, we're to the last part of the funky diagram. Here's the last post I did on it, in case you didn't memorize it....

Anyway, the last part is How To Communicate To Others. This might be the touchiest part of being a young person making pictures, because it seems like so often people don't see your work exactly as you would like them to.

When kids are Kindergarten age, they are storytellers. They love to draw and talk at the same time, and they don't mind if you ask what things are.

But later, this isn't so easy. Because if you ask what something is, then it means that you can't tell by looking at it. And if you can't tell by looking at it, there must be something wrong with the drawing.

Hm.

This is such an important point. Because when we read a book, we create that book's story inside our own heads. And no two people create the exact same story. Even when we see a movie, we all take different things away from it.

And, so much of what we see every day is designed to get us to think a certain way - billboards, advertisements, television shows - they are all meant to communicate something.

When we draw, it's very personal. So, having someone misinterpret or make fun of your drawing is the same as making you invisible or picking on you.

So the key is, when you see someone drawing, to simply look and react and encourage. Because this can mean the difference between a child continuing to draw and develop those brain cells and putting down the pencil for good.

Here are good things to say to a kid, whether it's your kid or your friend or your friend's kid, about his or her drawings:

"It looks like you put a lot of thought and work into that."

"I like this part. Can you tell me more about it?"

"What is going on here?"

"How did you decide to draw it that way?"

Things that are not so good to say include sentences that start with "That reminds me of..." or "I like your horse!" (When it's really a dog). So don't talk yourself into a corner by trying to tell what the drawing is. Let the artist take care of that.

Watch This! Then say, "Ouch."

This is kind of painful to watch but it's spot-on. Take a look at the video.
Then, look at the facts page too. Read the whole thing, it's all really good.
And let me say, this is a good time to acknowledge - again - the efforts of great public school teachers to take what they've got to work with and make something of it - year after year.
Send this to everyone you know.
This is why I am teaching.
And as an independent teacher, I work in lots of different settings - and see the synapses fire off in all kinds of kids. Not just the stereotypical "artsy" ones, but all of them. Different ages, different abilities, different personalities.
The best education teaches kids how to learn. THAT is what you take with you.

Funky Diagram Part 3: How to Think On Your Feet

Alrighty then, we're on to Part 3 of the Diagram. As a refresher, it looks like this:




Part 3 is terribly, terribly important because it is all about experiments and surprises. These days it seems all we want is the RIGHT answer. We want to be RIGHT all the time. Kids in school are supposed to learn to do things right so they can pass tests. Problem is, often there is more than one way to be right, or the right answer doesn't become clear immediately.

I worry that this has become too all-or-nothing. Galileo didn't do everything perfectly the first time. A lot of Leonardo's inventions were kind of weird. The lightbulb, the computer, recorded sound - nothing came without lots of experiments. In fact, here's an article about the earliest known experiment in recording sound that just got discovered. It is really cool.

I've watched a lot of kids have a really love/hate relationship with the eraser end of their pencil. In fact, when the eraser gets involved, most of the time that kid is not too happy. In fact, I've worked with a class for an hour or more only to find that one or two kids still have blank sheets because they've drawn - and then erased - any number of drawings.

Here are a couple reasons why:
1. The eraser sometimes means failure. You didn't draw it right, so you have to erase. Only people who mess up HAVE to erase.
2. The eraser is being used to obliterate a "bad" drawing. You must wipe the whole thing off the paper so it never happened.

Thinking on your feet means being willing to experiment and to be surprised. An eraser can be used to make smudges, or to draw in reverse on a white board. They can also be stuffed into pencil sharpeners, but that's a different story.

So, I try to get kids to think before they erase. Can you set the drawing aside and come back to it? What's the real reason for erasing? At least by asking you can find out more about how you feel about what you're drawing -- good or bad.

On to Funky Diagram Part 2: How to Discover Answers

Okay, getting back to the diagram (if you need a refresher, I introduce it here.)

Part 1 was, How to Ask Good Questions.

Now, here's Part 2: How to Discover Answers.

I had a good chance to consider this on my recent trip to the coast, because we were totally throwing rocks and running around in sand and checking out stinky tide pools. We were ACTIVELY engaged in our surroundings.

Things with screens (TVs, DVDs, games, phones, etc.) are primarily PASSIVE. Look, I used to work in the game industry, so I've played lots and lots of video games. And video games, even with role-playing and all of it, are passive things. No matter what you do, you are reacting to the design of the game. You have to figure out how to get around, how to accomplish things, and all of that.

There is hope - Wii games, for example. And Second Life. But you're still... consuming what someone else has set up. Someone else imagined it first.

To really Discover Answers, you need to be in the driver's seat. You need all your different types of senses and brain cells. When you draw, it's you, and your pencil. When you look at something, you have to decide how you're going to look at it. Is it something you can pick up and move around? Do you need to move yourself around to get a better look? Or is it inside your head? Can you move it around in there to get a better look at it?

When you go to start drawing, you have to decide what materials you are going to use. Do you need mooshy pastels, or sharp crayons, or a big felt-tip pen? Or are you just using whatever is handy at the moment?

Discovering Answers means being willing to be surprised, and being ready to see a whole lot of different ideas. Often the best answers come from somewhere that is unexpected. After all, isn't that what research is all about? If you already knew everything, you would never have to look anything up.

These days it is really easy to mistake data for information. Data is stuff you can display on a screen or look up in a database. Data is what you get when you search on Google or Wikipedia. It can be really helpful, but it is only part of the story.

When you are going to draw something, what you need is information. You need to know all about something, like how it makes you feel or what it's like at different times of day. Drawing is expressing your feelings and your imagination. You can't get that off a screen, it has to come from your experience.

So, Discovering Answers means you have to be ready and willing to pay attention to your world and to experience it as the messy, surprising place that it is -- not something neatly designed for a screen.

More about the Funky Diagram Part 1

As I mention in my previous post, asking good questions means changing your perspective, and seeing something in a fresh way to get your imagination moving.


For example, cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and museum educator Philip Yenawine developed something called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). This is a very simple way of looking at art and asking questions about what you see. It reveals a lot about how different people can look at the same thing and have different reactions. You can learn more about it here.


While VTS is aimed mainly at art in museums, I'd like to take it a step further and use it to look at advertisements. We are so covered in media and messages and SELLING these days it's hard to know where one ad starts and another one stops. And to me, teaching about art also means teaching about how to look at all the stuff that comes into our field of view with smart, savvy eyeballs.


So, here's something to try. Grab a magazine, and turn to an advertisement.


Now, answer these questions:

1. What is going on in this ad?

2. What do you see that makes you say that?

3. What else do you see?

4. Go back to #1 and repeat. Keep at it until you feel like you've given the ad the once-over.


Now that you've taken a really good look at the ad, you can try these questions from Common Sense Media:

1. Who made this ad?

2. Who did they make it for?

3. How does it get your attention (sizes of things, colors, pictures etc.)?

4. What is the message of the ad?

5. How does it communicate the message (pictures, words, celebrities, etc.)?


Asking good questions can turn you from a passive consumer to a smart, savvy, creative thinker and problem solver.

A couple of pointers:
- There are no right answers to the questions above - it's all about revealing what people see.
- Little kids will come up with really random answers to these sometimes! This can be great fun - and very enlightening as to how our ad-saturated world really looks to them.
- If you have more than one person looking, be sure to notice that everyone has their own answers and that's okay too.

Me and my Funky Diagram

I have a funky round diagram that I use to remind me of four things that encourage creative thinking and problem solving. Those are:

1. How to Ask Good Questions

2. How to Discover Answers

3. How to Think on Your Feet

4. How to Communicate to Others

It looks like this:

Okay, mine actually has a lot more stuff written all over it, and the overall result is a big thing that makes you go, "Huh?" But it's really helpful to me.

Most of the games and projects that I come up with address one or more of these areas. So, in the next few posts I'm going to take each of the 4 parts and explain it a little better, with examples and challenges for you.

Language is a Virus.

Laurie Anderson said that... I don't actually know what it means. But, I do think it's useful to consider all the languages that we speak as human beings.

Music is a language. Math is a language. Body language is a language. Packaging is a language. Filmmaking is a language. Architecture is a language. And, art is a language. Each of these things lets us express complex things about ourselves and the human condition. And they also let us transcend our cultural or verbal differences.

Learning about drawing is learning visual language. Again, kids know this intuitively. They are unfinished beings who need lots of ways to get their thoughts and feelings out. They do not know what is best put in a sentence or what is better expressed as a mathematical equation. They just have feelings and opinions and ideas, in raw form.

Mark making is one of the most direct ways to externalize one's thoughts. It does not require any particular training. But the simple act of getting something out onto a piece of paper or in the sand on the beach fires off neurons and refines a person's sense of identity and ability to think... and later to adapt those thoughts in to all sorts of languages.

So, next time you are at a museum, look at the art on the walls and imagine the artist standing there painting it - or welding it, or sculpting it, or whatever. Try to imagine what that person was feeling during that process. Think about how you feel when you look at a work. Does it make you edgy? Peaceful? Ask your kids how they feel when they look at art. Look at them looking at art. Watch what they gravitate toward. Often they will look at the same piece again and again. Olivia (of the children's books) loves a Degas painting. My kids really like Chagall.

Many museums have a day each month when they offer free admission. This is a great way to get kids in there, because you are not "risking" the admission price if one of the kids involved is having a bad day or missed a nap. I know museums can be kind of stuffy sometimes, but I personally love the sound of young voices echoing through a gallery.

The Age of the Artist

When I show art on here, I will generally tell you the age of the kid who drew it. This is not to say where that kid is developmentally, just to help you picture the scene as the drawing was being created.

I do not want to emphasize developmental age here, because it goofs up what I'm trying to get at: That drawing and creative thinking give people keys to the unique world between their ears. There is a general progression that artistic development tends to follow, so I'll refer loosely to that. But age is more of an insight into an individual person and where he or she is in life, not a developmental judgment. (There can be a lot of angst in teen drawings. Go figure.)

For example, Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 and did not read until he was 7. His parents said he was "sub-normal," and one of his teachers said he was "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams." Some of those foolish dreams turned out to be the basis for how we see our universe.

Perfectly Crafty? Not so much.

Many books about creativity for kids suffer from what I'll call Martha Stewart syndrome - they show lots of super cute, creative, PERFECT projects that are not going to happen at my house.

I have one book that shows this adorable little tote for your art supplies. I think you are supposed to carry your stuff with you on vacations and such... it's covered in bright construction paper, and has this cute face with googly eyes on the lid. Then, it even has perfect little rope handles that come out the sides so that you can tote it! Yay!

All I can see when I look at this project is the expression of frustration that will appear on my daughter's face as she says, "I want to make it like THAT one!" Sigh. Even if you managed to make a close approximation, the first trip in the car would be the end of its pristine Martha Stewart-ness.

Here's an idea (and why I have the aforementioned book in my house in the first place): Use those crafty books to find out HOW to make projects work, like how to make a bird feeder that will hang straight or a box divider that won't fall out - but DON'T show the finished product to your kid. Instead, make a functional "naked" version of the project, and then let him or her have at it with the decorations. There's the mechanics, and then there's the decorating part. If your kid is a little older, he or she might also like adding some "customizations" to the mechanical aspect of the project as well.

But give kids something to start with, so there's not this shining picture out there to which all comparisons are made. Trying to make something look like a craft project that was made by a professional for use in a book just isn't fair to a kid. But giving him or her something to make an individual statement can be both fun and informative. What does your child really think a bird feeder should look like? What are the current favorite colors and materials?

And, I must say that some of the designs that kids come up with on their own are MUCH cooler than something in a book - because you can see a kid's personality all over it.

Art and Emotions 2

This is what I drew the day we had to have our cat put to sleep.

This was AFTER four years of studying painting and drawing and printmaking at Stanford.

What's my point? Sometimes mark-making is purely an emotional thing. It's not necessary to always be "making" something, or making your drawing "look like" something.

Kids understand this intuitively. And if they have drawing as an outlet for their feelings, often they can feel safer expressing them.

I write more about this in my Art and Emotions post on my other blog too.

Tools are Not Talent.

I gave a talk at a local high school last week, and this was one of the quotes I used. I was talking to a group of Juniors, all of whom loved to draw. I was there to illuminate the world of life after high school, and how to have a creative career. I pointed out the need for writing and drawing skills and professionalism too of course.

"Tools are Not Talent" is a quote that I've had with me for many years. I'm not exactly sure where I got it. I carry it around on a little piece of paper that's been stuck up in various cubicles and offices over the years.

It means, it's not which software you have or how fancy your pens are, it's what you do with them. Sure, if you want to be a great watercolor painter you need to learn the properties of the medium -- but, in terms of exploring your own ideas, the materials don't matter. Your personality and life experience are going to come through whatever medium you choose - writing, drawing, movies, computer software, whatever. The key is to focus on what you have to say, not so much on which fancy technical pen you can't afford.

Creativity can be so Untidy.

Don't get me wrong, there is no problem with helping kids be successful in creating beautiful art. It can be very gratifying - and educational - for a child to make something that looks right, and that is pleasing to the eye.

However, the work my students produce tends to be distinctly untidy. This is because I am intrigued by the individual personality taking shape and letting that personality take hold of the pencil or crayon or pen or chalk. A child who is drawing is getting to know his or herself in a new way. So while the results may be chaotic at times, I can learn a great deal about a personality just by watching.

Then, I find that a child's drawing impulses will yield ideas about what that child would really like to be able to draw. Once a story or a character takes shape, then I can make suggestions for how to express it - what to show or not show, different poses, how to use speech bubbles, and the like.

When I was a kid I used to get a very strong urge to just draw anything. I would grab paper and just start in. I see my own kids get this same urge. I think that it comes from the depths of their developing brains, when something needs expressing. It turns out that in places where pencils and paper are scarce, kids will use sticks in the dirt to do the same thing. And it's not just kids who are considered "talented." All kids need to express themselves.

So, when things are really messy, I know I'm on the right track.

Welcome to The Drooly Dog Blog!

This is a blog all about creativity, art, kids, and kids with art, kids with creativity, art with creativity, and all of the above. It's for kids, parents, teachers, families, and anyone interested in fostering creativity. Welcome!

A little about me: I'm a longtime cartoonist and creator of "Brainwaves" and "The Mommy Track'd Funny Papers." You can see more about those here, at my website. I've also worked as a designer, information architect and creative director in film/video production, software, design consulting, and games.

A little about why I'm starting this blog:
1. Let's face it, our educational systems suffer from a chronic lack of resources and the arts are always on the losing end of that equation.
2. The arts teach creative thinking and problem solving, some of the most important skills that we can give our kids in an ever-changing world.
3. As an art instructor I have found that I don't have enough hours to meet the demand for workshops and classes. So I'm hoping to benefit more people faster this way.
4. I just love doing this stuff.

This blog is an offshoot of my other blog, because I felt this stuff needed its own home. So, there are several posts over there you should read too.

Check back often, and be sure to subscribe via email so you can get updates, special projects, and anything else I can think to throw at you. There will be email stuff that does not appear in this blog, so be sure to sign up!

Thanks for reading!