The other morning, my son (6 y.o.) started coloring and commented that he was very good at staying within the lines. It reminded me of my traumatic quashing of creativity story.
It was near Christmas. The third grade classes were assembled in the common area and given Christmas scenes to color. I colored my wreath using dark green for the edges and light green for the leaves. The ribbon got the same treatment in red. For the words-- Happy Holidays, maybe-- I alternated between red and green and used gold and silver outlines. I colored the door knocker on the imaginary door with copper and brass. Then, seeing that others were still coloring, I decided to do the door too. I was just getting started, filling the large area with broad strokes of dark brown when my teacher, the mannequin-faced Mrs. Walden, came up behind me, snatched the paper and yelled for the entire third grade to hear, “What are you doing? This is ruined! I’ll make sure YOUR parents get this one!” She then stalked off with the page half covered with brown scribbles.
It turned out that what we were coloring was to be the program for the school Holiday presentation. I just sat there with everyone staring at me and feeling like a loser.
That spring, Mrs. Walden, wearing her brown nylon wig and with full face putty, was sitting on a folding chair overseeing recess. The first robin of spring flew over and shat on her head.
So, how terrible is it to teach kids to color within the lines? I’m sure everyone has a similar story to mine, but has there ever been a great artist who didn’t live through an experience like this? (Not to imply that I’m a great artist!) My son hasn’t been traumatized and seems proud of himself for doing what he set out to do. There is a sort of cliche about ‘staying in the lines’ and crushing young creativity. So, has my kid been eternally relegated to the herd or is ‘coloring inside the lines’ just a dexterity issue and not related to conformism?
Well, I once heard that children are not so much naturally creative, but rather that they know so little about their surroundings that they are merely coming up with random things. To be creative is to create something, and random scribbling outside of the lines (your case is different) without meaning is not something to be commended… If someone “breaks the rules/social norms” for no good reason, then he is not creative, but merely eccentric or perhaps psychopathic.
I think it much more commendable that at his age, he’s setting goals for himself and trying to accomplish them, rather than simply losing focus.
I think you’re over-analyzing this. It’s fairly logical to believe that you’re supposed to stay inside the lines, so if he wants to, let him. If he suddenly decides not to, again, let him. It’s not that big of a deal, either way.
For me it wasn’t “color inside the lines” that tripped me up, it was “color in one direction.” We had a workbook activity where we had to color in these big rectangles in different colors, for no good reason. Except to pick the right color crayon for each box, but, really, I guess the whole point was that you had to inside the lines color in one direction. Not that the directions said that, of course. I think the point of the exercise was that you were supposed to know at this point how you were “supposed” to color.
I got bored with this pretty quickly, and decided, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I did a third of the block right-to-left, a third up and down, and a third diagonal. So that’s what I did. Each block was neatly and precisely divided into thirds, and each third very neatly colored in a different direction.
It was returned to me with a big red X over each box, an unhappy face and “COLOR IN ONE DIRECTION” written in red ink.
This is the teacher who insisted that I was retarded. I don’t know how you could look at my work and conclude that I didn’t know how to color in one direction. The only reason to mark it with big Xs was to insist that I had to conform with unspoken rules about how things are supposed to be done. Or maybe just pure meanness.
I had a couple of experiences like that, where I thought I was doing something cool, something above and beyond the call of duty, as it were, something that wasn’t contradicted by the instructions but which I knew was going to be different from what everybody else did, and every time I got burned. I guess it was a learning experience; what my six-year-old self learned was that in school, you do what is expected of you, and you do creative things on your own time. You shoulda seen my coloring books and the stories I wrote and my little art projects. I was encouraged a lot at home; that probably made a big difference.
No, it is not a terrible thing to teach children to stay within the lines any more than teaching intro art students how to draw color gradiation charts.
I think that in art, one should know the ‘rules’ and techiniques before breaking them. IMO, it gives you much more strength as an artist. As stated above, it becomes a willed effort as opposed to a happy accident (of which requires no talent).
Look at Picasso or Dali. Both, regardless of your tastes, have to be acknowledged as being artistic (in every sense of the word) and way out there. Both had formal training as artists in their early years.
So no, giving your child a slesson in structured art will not kill any creativity if that is their inclination.
Tell your kid to draw what he wants to, the way he wants to. Go ahead and point out that if he wants his stuff to look like what he sees in the comics or in TV cartoons, he needs to stay within the lines, but whatever he wants to do to keep drawing, that’s great.
You can also point out that if he starts with the lighter colors and works his way up to the darker ones, if he does accidently go over the lines, he can kinda cover up as he goes along…
It’s not bad to teach coloring within the lines. I think the true purpose is practicing fine motor skills. Very small children don’t color within the lines in part because they can’t – their little hands aren’t practiced at such things. Learning to control a crayon well enough to color within the lines is a step towards mastering the motor skills needed in writing.
What is terrible, however, was your teacher’s reaction. Even if you’d been scribbling all over the paper she shouldn’t have snapped at you that way, and an obvious attempt to produce an artistic effect shouldn’t have met with criticism at all.
Let the kid be proud of himself, if that’s how he feels! I remember being really excited when I developed the motor control to make my colored-in pictures look “good.” On the other hand, I was still very happy to color or draw on a blank piece of paper and make whatever I fancied–no lines to color within or cross over, just me being creative.
Bottom line–show appreciation for him doing whatever he likes to do. When he’s proud of being within the lines, compliment him on it, and point out what you like when he brings you something more “original,” too.
What Lamia said. My wife used to get upset when our then-four-year-old son would color outside the lines. I’d defend it, however, by saying he needs to be creative. I got my comeuppance at our first parent-teacher conference, where his teacher said he needs to learn to stay inside the lines to (a) develop fine motor skills and (b) learn to do his work with more attention to detail (as opposed to just slapdashing something together and then running off to play).
So now we ask him to color a bit more carefully and try to stay inside the lines. On the other hand, if he wants to color the sky green and the trees purple, I say more power to him. Now that’s creativity…
Man, this thread brings up bad memories. It was the first week of kindergarten when the teacher asked us to draw waht we’d done that summer. Well, my family had driven to Disney World so I drew that huge floral Mickey Mouse head you see at the entrance and a lot of orange trees. After lunch the teacher held up an example of a picture she liked and a picture she didn’t like. Of course, the one she didn’t like was mine and she didn’t like it because I didn’t color in straight lines. I had no idea that was even important. So now I’m 37 and still bitter…
Got no advice for the OP, just maybe you should make him aware that some silly people think coloring between the lines and in one direction is important but that he can do whatever he wants…
My mother taught me that to really color well you use the bottom of the crayon and go in circles lightly at first and then darker to build up the colors. If you are good you can avoid any lines at all. Me, i like a nice sharp crayon, because a nice sharp crayon is a crayon properly sharpened!
My fine motor skills were better than my peers and I only colored visbly in any direction if it seemed to suit the picture. Teachers hated it and would mark it wrong if I visibly colored in more than one direction even if it made sense and looked better than one direction. That is one place my mother disagreed with the teachers and was supportive. My pictures looked better and she said so.
We had to color a picture of Abe Lincoln in his stovepipe hat.
I’d colored most of it in a vertical fashion and the rest horizontally. I got a similar note from the teacher. The only way you could see that I’d color in two directions was to hold the drawing at an angle to the light.
I went to a catholic school in the 60’s, and so met many. many creativity impaired teachers (think women who wear black and white every single day.)
First grade: We had a math work sheet of adding and subtracting problems. I’ve always been good at math and got all the problems right. Unfortunately I got a great big US (for unsatifactory) because I colored the little horse picture at the top of the page blue (my favorite color to this day :() In addition there was a little note that horses are NOT blue.
5th grade: Another math story. I was given a D in my math class (even though I was in the 7th grade math class and aced every exam). Why did this happen? I stacked my books in the order of my classes instead of larger to smaller from bottom to top. :smack: I am not making this up, that’s what the teacher told my parents at the parent-teacher conference after I came home crying about my grade. She had mentioned the stacking issue to me a couple of times at school but I didn’t think it was a mandatory or grade-worthy problem.
Luckily it turns out that they lied about the “permanent record” and neither of the above incidents have affected my career. (Except I still don’t know when to use affect vs effect)
