Motivating Non Drawing Students
Marvin Bartel
How can we motivate students who say they have no art talent?  If they say, "I can not draw" and "I am rubbish at art" in most cases they honestly do have serious weaknesses. Additionally, they have devastating self-image problems.   How does a teacher improve their self-esteem?  How does a teacher help them improve their ability.

It requires a multifaceted approach.  The same approaches are not equally helpful in every situation.  Most cases need a combination of approaches to overcome years of bad habits, attitudes, and poor self-esteem.  

Identifying and Focusing on Their Desire to Learn
Part of the approach is to ask, “Do you wish you were better at drawing?”  Most students wish they could draw better.  Without desire on the part of the student, the teacher's job becomes very hard.  

In a few situations they many not want to become more skilled.  Their family might consider it outside their domain to be artistic.  They might belong to a social class that believes artists are weird, indolent, or not to be trusted.  If they do not respect an ability, it is hard to find incentive to develop the skill.   Fortunately this is rare in art.  Unfortunately, among the poverty class and to some extent in the working class there are good children whose families express distrust of educated people.  Hence, their children are trained to lack incentive to do well in school.  My sociologist friends call this the sociology of self perpetuating poverty.  

Motivating Their Desire to Learn
We can use subjects and topics that are important and interesting to them - things that grow out of their own immediate life experiences.  These vary.  I know an art teacher who has 13 and 14 year olds drawing details from a motorcycle in the classroom.  Many people store their bike for the winter.  It might as well be used as a still life.  This teacher always has an animal in his art room.  Few children fail to respond to the animal.  This year he has two lizards in a terrarium.  Last year he had a brown and white guinea pig.  
 

Third grade students enjoying the company of a live rabbit forget about their fear of drawing and freely practice blind contour lines with blinders on their pencils.

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The teacher encourages them to do many practice lines.  When the rabbit moves, they may allow the pencil to move to the new position and continue the line.
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see this link for more about the rabbit lesson
It goes without saying, students need to see themselves learning in order to be inspired to work hard, to focus, and make the effort to learn.  Regular practice drawings from observation will probably demonstrate this best for them.  We know that art is not only the ability to draw a likeness.  However, for the average student who cannot draw a likeness, few accomplishments will measure up to being able to draw when it comes to building self confidence and status with their peers and parents.  

Within a few weeks they can notice marked improvement if they are taught to concentrate on careful observation rather than on how drawings look on their paper.  They must be encouraged to compare with their own earlier work and not with others who may still be more skilled.    How they compare with their own earlier work must be emphasized. Once they learn how to learn - how to observe, and they see improvements, they are empowered to become better at it.  They can be convinced to practice on their own.  This drawing of a bone shows the result of practice.  Observing an unfamiliar object like a pelvic bone encourages observation rather than drawing from memory.

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Ways for Teachers and Parents to be Helpful
To be helpful, a teacher can call attention to the actual thing being observed.  We  place a finger on an edge of the object observed and move it slowly.  They can imagine an ant moving along the edge.  Blinders can be placed on their pencils to make sure they are not obsessing about the picture on their paper when they should be studying the subject being observed.  Blinders are seven-inch squares of tag board (like file folder materials or poster board) with a hole in the center.  The drawing pencil placed in the hole so the blinder hides the paper while drawing.  These are used to teach blind contour drawing which simply consists of slowly drawing the edge of the observed object slowly so that every detail can be noticed.  Teachers need to point out that the lines do not end up at the exact place they are expected to.  We give the lines permission to be wrong.  It a line goes around an object and ends up at the point of origin, it probably means the student peaked under the blinder.  Practice means we try it again and again. When we get a good drawing started, we can always use an eraser and fix a few mistakes later.  Lines are not sketchy, but continuous.  When a new line is started, students may peak under the card to locate the best starting place.

Teachers can encourage the comparison of shapes, sizes, lengths, directions, textures, tone, and so on.  Teachers can show them how to do sighting by using an outstretched arm and pencil measure to make visual comparisons.  Students can practice viewing through viewfinders (small cardboard frames) to see how to proportion objects and relate them to the edges of the paper. 
 
Here a house plant is being 
viewed through a clear plastic 
viewfinder with a grid. 
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This observation aide can be used to 
help see real objects in proportion.

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Teachers need to find ways to
make the hard stuff easier
and the easy stuff harder. 

When students ask for help, teachers can go to the subject being drawn and use hand motions to point out general orientation of lines and shapes, hold a hand near the line being observed to show the angle, and so on.  They can point to details. Teachers can ask lots of awareness questions.  Drawing teachers do not draw for students because to do so causes students to envy the teacher's drawing and try to mimic it rather than observing the subject.

Things to Avoid
We should not show tricks or formulas from "how to draw" books or videos.  These are counterproductive in that they are shortcuts to learning to observe and do not encourage drawing from actual observation.  The part of the brain that needs to develop is not challenged by these tricks.  They are crutches that create limitations and dependencies.

Even showing the placement of eyes and parts of the face on an oval is a general formula.  It constitutes a formula that requires less actual sighting, observation, and decision making on the part of the student.  Why not ask them to find the placement of the parts of the face using sighting methods?  Why not use mirrors?  Have them tilt their face toward the mirror to make one observation and tilt the head back to make another.  Have them look askance at the mirrors.  Have them decide how the eye line ends changes.  

Other Ways, Styles, and Habits of Working
Not all drawing is direct observation.  There are times when we draw memories.  When working from memory, teachers can ask many detailed questions.  The student answers the questions with drawing.  If a student asks how to draw something, the teacher asks the student to draw it the way they think it should look.  Allow students to make preliminary experiments on other paper it figure out how to do things.  With young children the teacher can ask the child to show the teacher how to draw it.  The teacher never shows the child how to draw the child's experience.  
 
Even things we see everyday, are not totally memorized. The top eye is drawn from memory by an adult.  The bottom eye is then drawn by the same adult while using a mirror to observe her own eye. The next time this person draws an eye from memory, she will have learned more about the parts of her eye.

Some drawing is neither observation nor memory. When drawing from imagination, students can be asked to generate the questions as well as the visual answers.  What are the parts of a home of the future?  

Expressive gesture drawing is often used as a change of pace.  It must be explained that this is not intended to give the same results as contour drawing.  It is an opposite way of working.  Gesture drawing is to be done fast, and for contrast, it may be best to not allow any outline drawings.  One way is to place a student model in the center of the room posed in an action pose.  Do not allow stick figures, but ask them to fill in the figure without making an outline as fast as they can.  Allow from 20 to 100 seconds to fill in a figure using a crayon on 12 by 18 inch paper.  Ask them to try to get the overall pose, the angles, the lengths, and the forms filled in as quickly as possible.  

Many artist combine contour and gesture drawing in the same work.  Kathe Kollwitz’s self-portraits can an appropriate study of art history at the end of a drawing session.

Demythologizing Talent
It is important to periodically explain that drawing is not "talent".  Teachers use the words it "ability" and "skill" to describe accomplishment.  Too many people still feel that "talent" is a genetically inherited "gift". There may be some inherited precursor abilities involved here, but most of what we think of as drawing ability is probably the result of copious amounts of self initiated practice during childhood and later.  There are very few who lack the basic genetic brain power to learn observation drawing with enough practice.  Drawing is a kind of physical genius similar to good athletics, good surgery, or good cello playing.  Physical genius comes from lots of practice.  Of course early practice by the very young can give a head start that often appears to be talent.

The strongest physical genius is likely to develop for practitioners who love to overcome mistakes.  Teachers need to tell students in detail about mistakes they have made and how much they have learned from their mistakes.  We love erasers, but many artists wait to erase until after they have found a better solution.

Some families encourage children's drawing practice, some ignore it, and some actually destroy the child's natural inclinations to learn.  Many have no notion of what to do that is helpful.  Their children probably have a slim chance of developing natural skills that are described by many as talent.

Sooner or later every child asks for help.  That is often when the trouble begins.  The help that is given can easily be destructive rather than helpful.  Well-meaning adults often make totally inappropriate "corrections" and suggestions.  We ruin a child's ability to observe, express, and to be self-sufficient when we draw for them and when we buy them pattern books, drawing instruction books, coloring books, and so on.

By age nine or so, most children seem to have reached a point when they are quite aware of the good "drawers" among their peers.  Sometimes the accomplished ones have a parent or most often an uncle or aunt who is also quite accomplished.  This leads people to assume that they have this special inherited talent.  We suspect the skilled ones have been fortunate to receive inspiration and in some cases even some helpful instruction within their family system.  At least they have the notion that drawing is a valued skill in their family.  This has motivated them to practice.  We see similar family influences in music.  

Understanding Learning Difficulties
Most students who exhibit inability to learn also exhibit inability to single-mindedly focus on a difficult task.  We hear them mumbling about how hard this is or how stupid it is.  We also hear them discussing many "off topic" concerns as they "work".  This tells us that their mind is very divided between learning and complaining, or between learning and socializing.  Their emotions (motivation) are being divided between trying to learn and self-pity, or between trying to learn and the entertainment of music or social interaction.  Who can learn in such a state?  Very few can.  We observe many underachieving students that are constantly in such a state.  We learn when we are absorbed in the task.  We learn better when we are not too tired.  When we multitask, we may get routine chores done faster, but we probably are not really learning new things.  

Sometimes a teacher's assigned task is too hard.  Often the teacher has not bothered to give preliminary preparation and practice for a new task.  It creates frustration that expresses itself as confusion and lack of focus.  Giving a few more details or a bit more preparatory practice helps.  Other times our assigned tasks are too easy and students will not focus on them for lack of challenge.  They will see them like mere chores to complete.  They will multitask and socialization or listening to music takes most of their attention.  For us to be absorbed and focused on a learning task, we need to feel it is challenging and that we are growing, but it must not be so difficult that we have no idea where to start.  Good teachers make the easy stuff harder and the hard stuff easier.  Good teachers are constantly on the alert to make these adjustments, to provide appropriate preparation activities for those who need them, and to challenge those who are bored by adding complexity and harder problems to solve.  

Good teachers find ways to help stronger students become helpful to other students.  We need to keep helping students from doing too much for those they are helping.  These students need to learn to use questions rather give answers.  They can phrase question and not give suggestions when they help.

Responding to Negativism
We should never encourage negativism with a dismissal such as, "That's okay, I know lots of people who can't draw."  Such an answer does not help.  It discourages the student from trying and it devalues the skill itself.  

If a student says, "I am not talented in drawing", we can say something like, "I know how you feel.  There was a time when I was totally stupid about computers, but even though I was terribly discouraged about it at times, I just kept practicing, making mistakes, asking for advice, reading directions, and studying until I got them to work for me.  Even now I would never say I am talented at using computers. I still keep making mistakes, but I still keep learning from the mistakes.  Drawing is like that.  We get good at drawing if we are willing to practice, to pay attention, to make lots of mistakes and to learn from our mistakes.  I learn to use computers because it is important and it is fun.  We learn drawing because it is important and it is fun.  Being a good observer is really important.  Learning how to learn is probably the most important."
 
 


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Notice: © 2001, Marvin Bartel, instructor. Goshen College students may print out a copy for personal use. Others who wish to copy or publish any part of this electronically or otherwise must get permission to do so. 
 E-mail: marvinpb@goshen.edu