Learning to Draw: Confidence Plus Effort Equals Success!

On the first day of class, each term, I ask my students to raise their hand if they can draw a stick figure or a happy face. Usually most every hand goes up. I follow this easy question with a harder one: How'd you learn? "I don't know" or a shrug of the shoulders is the typical response. Probing deeper, kids will say they watched someone else, or copied or just figured it out. Great! I tell them, that's how you LEARN to draw anything.
Most middle school students (and lots of adults, too) think that being a good artist means you can just naturally draw well. To relieve the anxiety many middle school students feel about art class and their own assessment of their lack of drawing ability, I start class by insisting that being a good artist isn't about natural drawing skills, that drawing skills can be learned, just like learning to draw a stick figure or write alphabet letters.
During the past week my students learned contour line drawing and gradual tone shading. They learned how to use a valuable art tool, the index finger, to smudge graphite as they shaded, they learned to use an eraser to reveal highlights and most importantly they learned to see with their eyes, not with their mind, so that they could draw the shoe in front of them with all its creases, tears, and scuff marks, not the idea of a shoe in their mind's eye.
The results of these simple drawing lessons amaze the students. Last Friday my second hour class installed our SHOE exhibit in the cafeteria. They hung 72 shoe drawings - one from every student in three classes. Sure, some are "better" or more accurately drawn than others, but each drawing shows amazing growth in the way the individual artist learned to see shape and form, highlights and shadows, and depict this on the 2-D surface of the paper.
Several teachers and a lunch lady commented on what excellent drawing skills this particular group of students has. I nodded my head in agreement, but silently added, EVERY group of students can draw, when they combine a few simple skills with confidence and effort!