Drawing for Children - exercises, ideas, and inspiration

Drawing Together is a series of easy to follow drawing exercises:
- creating backgrounds;
- creating characters;
- creating a storyboard;
- thinking about ideas;
- making a jointed character;
- animating on the computer;
- making a flick book;
- making a sliding animation;
- a doodle worksheet.

Drawing Together is aimed at children aged 8 and upwards.

Drawing Teaching Ideas:

Many thanks to Eileen Adams from Power Drawing for the following notes:

Storytelling in drawing

The impulse for storytelling in young children's drawings helps them to structure a verbal narrative. Drawing helps to organise their thoughts into a logical sequence. For them, stories generally have a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories tell us what things look like, what we are like, what we do and how we behave. In the narrative, the intention may be to explain a sequence of events or to show cause and effect. The child may choose to fuse time and space and a complex series of interactions and relationships into one image. The child who has made the drawing will undoubtedly be able to explain these. Alternatively, a series of drawings can show clearly the various phases involved in the sequence. It may be a report. It may involve plot and characterisation.

Children are able to construct narratives using a number of strategies:

- Retelling a story - a familiar story is retold through drawings that show significant parts.

- Picturing a familiar story - the child adapts elements of a familiar story and uses drawing to retell it.

- Telling your own story - drawing comes first, then the child makes up a story in response to it.

See also Draw!

and Shy Drawing, Loud Drawing

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