Another village sketch by a student in my class

I am really impressed with the progress that most of the students are making in my art classes. While there are some students that don't really want to be here and their parents are simply using these government-funded classes as a form of free babysitting, most of the kids in the class are really keen to learn and improve their skills.

The other day we did a 30 minutes sketch project where I had various photos of iconic looking countryside villages and allowed them to choose any one that they wanted and then recreate it using pencils in 30 minutes or less. The idea here wasn't to create a masterpiece, it was to hone their skills in doing things quickly. This time we also used no grid program and everything was done freehand.

I was quite impressed with a lot of them but this one in particular was impressive to me.

While it doesn't look exactly like the original photo I never wanted it to. If we want to have 1 to 1 copies of a photograph we have printers and copy machines for that. What I wanted was the student to recreate something using their own imagination.

Having a timeline encourages people to hone their skills and not overthink what they are doing and I have seen real progress from many of the students in precisely this realm. This particular student finished right at the brink of the 30 minutes and the entire class was giving praise to this girl who is around 13 years old.

She shows genuine interest in being an artist and this sort of praise reinforces that notion. I wouldn't say that all of the students in my class show promise of future skill but this girl, who has never done anything but doodle as kids tend to until joining my class shows an enthusiasm towards art that makes me believe that she could definitely go on to do wonderful things with her art ability.

Soon we will move back to watercolors and before the season is over we will dabble with some oil paints as well. For now though, I prefer to use materials that are reversible should anyone make a mistake.

If you have an interest in art, I strongly suggest that you simply get your hands on some number 2 pencils and some nice paper... IE not printer paper. Then the only thing you have to do is start doing something, anything! Beauty does lie in the beholder and the only way to find your inner artist is to have a try at it. Who knows? There could be a famous artist lying in wait inside of all of us.