China has long been in a relative blank in the field of children's art education. The traditional practice is basically copying the methods of adult art education, focusing on skill learning, and adjusting the "childlike innocence" according to what adults think children's paintings should be, while ignoring the characteristics of children's physical and mental development. Common practices, such as:
1) The coloring activity is based on whether it is even and neat and not drawn outside the line. Adults think that this is training children's movement accuracy and wiring skills, but for children, painting has become a mechanical action without thinking, and because of the limitation of children's physiological level, it may not meet the requirements, and then it is easy to lose interest in painting.
2) Teach children to draw stick figures, or copy pictures according to the stereotype of examples. In this way, they can "teach" children to draw "decent pictures" as soon as possible. This is a vicious circle. Parents judge children's level and teachers' level by their children's paintings "looking passable". Art teachers win parents' approval by letting children imitate and creating "decent paintings" according to the rules. In order to get affirmation and reward, children mistakenly think that painting is to copy in step with instructions, either copying the whole painting or combining various local copies they have practiced.
3) Let the children draw with the steps of crossing. This method has strong reproducibility, high controllability, relatively low requirements for teachers and strong decoration, so many art classes now teach children to draw in this way, which even leads many people to think that such paintings are children's paintings full of "childlike interest". In fact, cross-hatching and coloring painting are just a style technique. Whether from the perspective of exploring the application of various visual elements or from the perspective of being familiar with the characteristics of painting materials and tools, the effect of cross-hatching and coloring painting is very limited. Children are used to drawing, so they have to cross the line before painting, which is like walking into a dead end. Although they can draw a painting with a strong sense of decoration in a short time, it has considerable limitations and harm to imagination, thinking and expression.
4) Began to learn sketch color and other systematic techniques too early, regardless of children's psychological and physical development. In fact, skill learning is a natural thing for children after they are fully prepared in all aspects. Not only is it not difficult, but it can also help children to reach a leap soon. However, if the child is not prepared in all aspects, the harm may be the above, and the loss outweighs the gain.
For children aged 2-5, it seems that they are just "doodling". In fact, it is from this seemingly random activity that children gradually understand and explore various visual elements and become familiar with the characteristics of various materials and tools. Through a large number of experiments on various combinations of lines, shapes, colors and layouts, children gradually "invented" more and more visual symbols. This symbol is not the pursuit of copying natural objects, but the children perceive the characteristics of things with their own minds and hearts, and then process and choose them, and then develop a set of "visual language" of their own.
First form the concept of vision, then explore the relationship between visual elements and invent visual symbols. When their own set of "visual language" is basically formed, children will begin to use it to express their thoughts and feelings. Generally, around the first grade of primary school, many children begin to have clear expression needs and develop their own set of expressions. The more fully and freely children develop in the whole early childhood, the richer, more complex and more vivid the visual language will be. The stronger the child's driving ability, the stronger his expressive ability; On the other hand, if there are few doodling opportunities, single forms or too many restrictions (such as children who have been taught too much "shape"), their visual language will be poor, monotonous and rigid, and their comprehensive control and expressive power will be relatively weak.