liza sabater

Hey all,

At one point or another writing and reading anxieties come up on this
list but, what about drawing. I still get agita over my son who is 8
years old and still not doing any figurative drawing.

Disclaimer, my husband is an artist and his work is abstract.

Please smack me down or please, pat me on the back. I don't know why
this so bothers me; that he does no figurative drawing at all.

/ liza sabater

mother of thing1 and thing2

:)

AIM - cultkitdiva
SKYPE - lizasabater


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Su Penn

Don't know if this will help: I recently read the book "Why Gender
Matters" by Leonard Sax. Very interesting--the author argues that there
are real sex differences, but they're not what we tend to think they
are (that is, not "girls are no good at math" but other things about
how learning is accomplished and relationships are formed and managed).
He says that boys do not tend to draw figures as much as girls do, that
often at ages where girls are drawing little scenes of houses and
families with flowers and trees and the sky and family dogs (and
getting praised a lot by teachers for it), boys are often drawing
things that look like scribbles. But if you ask the boys to tell you
about their pictures, they will say that they have drawn a depiction of
some kind of action. For instance, they might say they drew a dune
buggy going all around, and the scribble, to them, represents the path
of the dune buggy. After I read that, I realized that my son does this
all the time! He also draws figures, but a lot of his pictures are just
complex scribbles, and he will say that he drew a vehicle driving
around, or a fire burning, or a volcano erupting.

It helped me to become aware of this because I did sometimes have
thoughts like, "he can draw pictures of things, why is he doing all
this stuff that is 'just' scribbling?" I actually worried at one point
that he was regressing developmentally because he had done all these
really accurate pictures of things like helicopters, but then for weeks
all he was doing was scribbling happily away. But being cued by Sax's
book to listen for him to tell me what was going on in his pictures
made me aware that he has a specific purpose in drawing those
"scribbles" and they are very satisfying for him. Now I realize that
he is getting what HE needs out of the drawing he does.

I hope this helps.

Su

On Aug 3, 2005, at 12:03 PM, liza sabater wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> At one point or another writing and reading anxieties come up on this
> list but, what about drawing. I still get agita over my son who is 8
> years old and still not doing any figurative drawing.

soggyboysmom

--- In [email protected], liza sabater
<nyc.blogdiva@g...> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> At one point or another writing and reading anxieties come up on
>this
> list but, what about drawing. I still get agita over my son who is
>8
> years old and still not doing any figurative drawing.
>
> Disclaimer, my husband is an artist and his work is abstract.
>
> Please smack me down or please, pat me on the back. I don't know
>why
> this so bothers me; that he does no figurative drawing at all.
>
> / liza sabater
>
> mother of thing1 and thing2
LOL my DS is 7 and he'd rather draw schematic looking things than
dogs and sunshine and flowers. When he was a tot (maybe 3?) he drew
two rows of squares with lines connecting them one corner to another
corner. He said it was the electricity wires connecting the houses!
It's only recently that he has even gone to multi-colored within a
drawing (generally he just keeps going with whatever comes to hand).
And that was mostly because he wanted to draw "battles"
between "monsters" - I get one color and he gets another and we
create 'robots' and then 'zap' each other with rays and
build 'shields' and all. Oh, and now his favorite thing is playing
with PaintShop Pro (last night he made a yellow spiderweb and a
black dot for a spider. then he added blue dots, those were the
spider's prey, per his explanation, and he draw black lines from the
original spider location to the prey locations) and with the CAD/CAM
software that I use for work (I have it on my home computer as well
so I can work from home sometimes). He loves making spheres and
cones and such because he can shade them so they look really solid -
last night he made the solar system - yellow sphere for sun, various
sizes and colors of spheres for planets, including the unnamed
possible planet 10 (I found a bit about it in this week's Time
magazine and pointed it out to him and we spent a good 30 minutes
thinking up names for it - I'm leaning toward 'George' or 'Wow'
myself lol - I'm thinking some enterprising person should auction
off naming rights via eBay - the funds to go to subsidizing further
study of the new planet).

Just as some people don't read fiction and others love it and some
read only for information and others read anything they can get
their hands on, I think it follows that some people will draw
colorfully and fancifully and others won't. For that matter, perhaps
your DS just won't tolerate anything that looks less than exactly
like his subject so he just doesn't go there.

[email protected]

I recommend a round of Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences, either the
generic (off websites) or prescription (Thomas Armstrong) or uncut (Frames of
Mind) to remind your husband that it's only one of many intelligences and
genetics are such that he might have it or might not and that not all art is flat on
paper (or pixelmap).

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

liza sabater

On Aug 03 2005, at 01:14 PM, soggyboysmom wrote:

> For that matter, perhaps
> your DS just won't tolerate anything that looks less than exactly
> like his subject so he just doesn't go there.

It's amazing. He will drop from a 10foot ramp on his skateboard over
and over and over again because he knows it's only way to get one step
closer to being Tony Hawk. But he if he doesn't write a word correctly
or draws exactly what he has in mind, he gets immediately frustrated.
And btw, I've really worked hard against correcting him and just
letting him be (just as I have read many times here). But there's
something about speed and the physicality of the activity that allows
him to err. Does that make sense?

/ liza

liza sabater

On Aug 03 2005, at 12:37 PM, Su Penn wrote:

> I realized that my son does this
> all the time! He also draws figures, but a lot of his pictures are just
> complex scribbles, and he will say that he drew a vehicle driving
> around, or a fire burning, or a volcano erupting.

Both guys do this as well, but the little one more so. I should take a
picture of his dinosaur scene, Aidan, the youngest, drew. He is less
sporty than Evan (the oldest) and is more eager to draw. BTW, they both
like to color --we have canvasses and acrylic paints for them and what
not. It may also be that gross motor thing.

I definitely will read the book and report back. It sounds like a
keeper.

/ liza

liza sabater

On Aug 03 2005, at 01:38 PM, SandraDodd@... wrote:

> I recommend a round of Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences, either
> the
> generic (off websites) or prescription (Thomas Armstrong) or uncut
> (Frames of
> Mind)

Thanks, it has been in my "To Do" list for ages now.


> to remind your husband that it's only one of many intelligences and
> genetics are such that he might have it or might not and that not all
> art is flat on
> paper (or pixelmap).

You know, Mark is actually totally fine with the idea that Evan is
jock. I'm the one who is thinking "but at this age *i* used to draw a
lot". And I am needlessly comparing him to either girls ( a lot of our
HS friends are girls) or older boys!

That's why I needed a virtual slap-upside the head. It's not like I
don't know his behaviour is OK, it's that it surprises me that I am
still caught in the drama of 'education' or 'schooling' --ugh!

/ l i z a

mamaaj2000

Oh, I understand. My 4 yr old is a very abstract drawer on the rare
occasions he does pick up a crayon, paint brush, etc. He didn't want
to try making letters until dd got a Magna Doodle. The fact that he
could erase whatever he wrote immediately let him take a chance and
try to make shapes and letters.

Here's a big, 4 color one if you think he might like to try it.

http://www.fisher-price.com/us/products/product.asp?id=28861

Looks a bit little kid-ish. Maybe a white board and dry erase pens
would give a similar feeling of non-permanence...

--aj

--- In [email protected], liza sabater
<nyc.blogdiva@g...> wrote:
But he if he doesn't write a word correctly
> or draws exactly what he has in mind, he gets immediately
frustrated.
> And btw, I've really worked hard against correcting him and just
> letting him be (just as I have read many times here). But there's
> something about speed and the physicality of the activity that
allows
> him to err. Does that make sense?
>
> / liza

soggyboysmom

--- In [email protected], Su Penn <pennsu@m...>
wrote:
>boys are often drawing
> things that look like scribbles. But if you ask the boys to tell
>you
> about their pictures, they will say that they have drawn a
>depiction of
> some kind of action.
Oh my - grinning here! That's so accurate a description of what many
of DS' drawings are like. I think one probable reason he doesn't do
nearly as much drawing as many girls I know (his cousins, etc) is that
paper and marker (crayon, pen, pencil, paintbrush) just can't
adequately show the movement to his satisfaction. I think that's one
of the reasons he likes the CAD/CAM software we have - he can click a
button and rotate it all around and zoom in and out and pan sideways
and look at it from different angles (front, side, top, etc).

--Deb

Kris

Well, here's what I've seen in regards to your worries.
My younger brother (seven) likes to do most of the things I do (gee,
what a surprise.), and me loving to draw and spending a large amount
of time on the computer with my tablet in hand, looking productive has
apparently gotten to him. I recently started playing a game with him
(sort of like lazy D&D), and we started to draw "maps" on my
OpenCanvas program.

Now, he doesn't like to draw people, and after a few minutes he starts
getting annoyed and going "Ugh, it doesn't look right!" but he'll
spend HOURS making maps. I honestly think there's something to do with
the gender. I've noticed that many, many boys want to draw things as
they see them, and making up people in their mind and putting it
accurately to paper is super hard. Obviously, that is subject to
special cases and just general change, but that's how I tend to look
at it.

And also, Jonathan tends to pressure himself when he knows he's unable
to erase whatever he's doing, I think that's one of the reasons he
likes doing it on the computer.

--Lanora, Daughter to Kris, Sister to Jonathan



On 8/3/05, liza sabater <nyc.blogdiva@...> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> At one point or another writing and reading anxieties come up on this
> list but, what about drawing. I still get agita over my son who is 8
> years old and still not doing any figurative drawing.
>
> Disclaimer, my husband is an artist and his work is abstract.
>
> Please smack me down or please, pat me on the back. I don't know why
> this so bothers me; that he does no figurative drawing at all.
>
> / liza sabater
>
> mother of thing1 and thing2
>
> :)
>
> AIM - cultkitdiva
> SKYPE - lizasabater


--
The true measure of a person is how they treat those who can be of no
use to them.

soggyboysmom

--- In [email protected], Kris <kris1956@g...>
wrote:

> My younger brother (seven) <snip>
>he'll
> spend HOURS making maps.
My DS is 7 also and he loves to make mazes - he'll get a stack of
paper and two markers or pens. We take turns making mazes for the
other to find their way through. The ones he makes have the added
features of 'hazards' like flames or electric eye type beams that you
can't go through, stuff like that. Makes it interesting because he has
to explain the whole thing before I start going.

He also loves the map creation part of StarCraft and will play for
hours on his computer making maps, putting in minerals and vespene gas
vents and water and land and mountains and things. Then, he and DH
will play against the computer using those maps. At first, DH would
check the map out beforehand to make sure it was actually playable (if
there are no minerals or gas, no one can build any bases or armies and
the game goes nowhere). Now DS has the hang of it and he just loves
it. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised all that much since he's loved
maps since he was about 2 and found a National Geographic map of
Antarctica that came with the magazine issue.

--Deb

Manisha Kher

--- liza sabater <nyc.blogdiva@...> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> At one point or another writing and reading
> anxieties come up on this
> list but, what about drawing. I still get agita over
> my son who is 8
> years old and still not doing any figurative
> drawing.
>
> Disclaimer, my husband is an artist and his work is
> abstract.
>
Are you or your husband expecting him to be an artist?

Honestly, I don't remember ever drawing anything or
coloring as a child except as required in school. I
have not drawn anything in a great many years and
frankly my drawing ability stinks. Yet I get along in
the real world quite well.

Whenever I start feeling anxious about something that
my daughter would be doing in school, or when
well-meaning people ask me "how will she learn xyz?",
I try to think of the last time that I needed that
"xyz". That trims down the must-know-skills to
reading, some arithmetic, driving (at least in most of
US) and a few other things.

Manisha


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