Drawing What You See Is Different From Drawing What You Think You See

Ask a child to draw a leaf from memory.

You may get a familiar green shape with a line through the middle.

Looking at a Real Leaf

Now place a real leaf on the table.

Look closely.

• Perhaps one edge is torn.
• The two sides are not perfectly symmetrical.
• Several veins branch away from the centre.
• There are yellow spots hiding inside the green.
• The stem bends slightly to one side.

Suddenly the leaf becomes much more interesting.

Observation Changes What Children See

Observation is one of the habits emphasized in Studio Thinking. Artists learn to look closely and notice things that are easy to overlook.

This is not only a technique for realistic drawing.

It changes the relationship between the child and the subject.

Instead of drawing the idea of “a flower,” a student begins seeing this particular flower.

Instead of assuming both eyes sit exactly the same way in a portrait, they compare shapes, shadows and angles.

Lessons That Begin With Looking

A useful art lesson therefore does not always begin with instructions.

Sometimes it begins with silence.

Look for thirty seconds.

What do you notice?

Look again.

What did you miss?

The first answer might be “It's brown.”

The fifth may be “The shadow is actually purple near the edge.”

That is artistic learning happening in real time.

In a world where images flash past us in seconds, art gives children permission to stay with one thing long enough to really see it.

The pencil comes later.

Sources & further reading

• Harvard Project Zero — Studio Thinking
• Harvard Project Zero — Eight Studio Habits of Mind