I have to say that I am really impressed with what this kid has done and when you tell a child that they should draw whatever they want it is pretty crazy that they would choose a famous landscape artist and not something like superheroes or anime.
He was working on this pencil drawing and was really proud of himself and I encouraged him to continue being proud of his work. Yesterday he brought in the completed work and I gotta say, this kid could be going places.
You can see in the background there that there is a grid formation if you look at it closely enough. This is a process that I encourage all of my students to use when they are first starting out. Attempting to look at an entire picture and replicate it can be a daunting and frustrating task when learning. By breaking the elements of the picture down into tiny squares, it can be a lot easier for someone to learn or at least get their bearings before attempting to tackle the entire thing head on. I don't recommend that people use this method as their ONLY way of creating a drawing, but it helps to make the process more understandable when a person is first attempting to get into art. Once you understand the basics, this is when the creativity really starts to come out of a person.
Technology has made this process far more simple because you can take any digital photo or drawing and put a grid overlay on it and then zoom in on each of those pieces to see the full details of it. Some would say this is cheating but there are no rules in art and if the technology makes the process less frustrating and more interesting for the student or young artist, I say to go ahead and use it. This doesn't mean that I think people should copy other artists' work exclusively - because that sort of artwork is quite boring. I think that it is important that people get out there and create their own original work and don't just copy other people's.
This is what I have encouraged this student to do next, should he wish to make another landscape. I encouraged him to do one that is completely original either by looking a photo of his own, or just drawing from memory.
I'm excited to see what that ends up looking like.
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