By the way, my kids did their drawings and colouring on the floor. Not very good. Try to get a proper table so that they can sit upright. The doodling sessions just take place anytime and anywhere, as and when my kids want to do it. Especially for my second child, Cinderella, (I called my kids based on fairy tales characters), I just let her be and she will experiment it with pens and colour pencils.
Personalised Drawing Lesson-1
As for my eldest child, Snow White, who is more mature, I tried drawing and colouring with colour pencils when she turned 4 this year. I would draw a picture . First by using shapes. I do not have a proper education in Art, but I have heard alot from art teachers who would start teaching by introducing them to shapes. I would teach Snow White how to draw the head --a circle, the body-a rectangle for male and triangle for female(skirt). Along the way, I tried to reinforce by buying games that can reinforce not only her Math skills, motor skills but Art skills as well. Just look below the game set that I bought for her :
Some of the early drawings focused a lot on circles. As you can see below. This is achieved after some teaching.
Finally , you see something like below:
Once started, I noticed that Snow White tends to draw everything related to it. That means, to her, everything has a human face! Take a look at the pictures that she drew (in April 2010) when asked by her teacher how a potato and sun should look like.
3 months later (in July), Snow White is able to 'see' different objects and draw how the objects should look like. See the pictures below on what she likes and dislikes when asked by her childcare teacher.
It took quite a few sessions to actually see the drawing of a girl from her (a bit distorted but recognisable)After drawing, next will be colouring. I taught Snow White to outline the shapes using colour pencils first and then filling in the centre. Most kids should be excited about colouring. Both my kids are. Snow White was very happy after learning how to draw. I was even happier to see her achievement. As for Colouring,she enjoys it very much. Somehow, it was not good or perhaps I was too ambitious and impatient, she just did not get it right. So I 'dumped' colouring and started with painting.
Below are some of Snow White's early colouring when she was 3 years old:
for each picture that she is concentrating on.
A female drawn and coloured by Snow White.
Painting
When comes to painting, I purchased a box of paints and brushes and prepared some rags and an empty container. I allowed Cinderella to play with paints but not using her fingers. She was quite happy to hold a brush and dip the brush into the paint and then start her doodling. For Snow White, she insisted that I drew a picture for her, so I would draw a house, a big apple, a cat, a flower and let her paint. I did not particularly focus on the colour scheme. She ever painted a face blue.
Instead, I just taught her to be careful and colour within the given space.
