Turn painting mistakes into something even better
Print Edition
DID you know that we don’t have any erasers in the art room? Amazing, isn’t it, that YCIS Shanghai students can create gorgeous masterpieces without anyone making a single mistake! Wait ... how is that possible? Actually, many of our young artists make multiple “mistakes” as they are working on their drawings, collages, and paintings — we just didn’t think of them as mistakes! This is why we didn’t need any erasers. In fact, in our art room, we learn real artists appreciate a line that has gone astray. We see mistakes as an opportunity to practice creativity, flexibility, and problem solving skills.
Creating art is all about exercising our brains. Every project is a problem that must be solved. Just like in math, when the teacher asks the students to figure out how many apples are still on the tree after a third of them fall off, problem solving skills also come into play in the art room when the teacher asks the students how would they squeeze and pinch clay so it resembles a face.
Whether they are drawing in their sketchbook or on a good piece of art paper, my students at YCIS don’t use erasers. Erasers train a young student artist to edit and criticize. This inhibits the flow of their creative juices. Giving students a permanent marker, a paintbrush, or oil pastel instead of a pencil takes away the choice of going backward, and that’s okay! The message changes from “Make it perfect!”, to “Don’t worry about what didn’t go right the first time. Try it again and see if you can improve on it.” Or better yet, “Take your mistake and make it into something even better”! Unintended lines or squiggles often give students the chance to add a surprisingly attractive feature to their artwork.
Our approach in the art room develops students’ ability to think outside of the box, to turn their brain sideways and look at things from a new angle. This flexibility of thinking is exactly what the YCIS school mission is all about. We want our students to be more than “academic whiz kids.” We want them to be ready to take on any problem they meet in the real world. This starts here, in the art room, with a crayon and a piece of paper. But no eraser.
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