Kid Drawings

I'm not sure if anyone when they were in their last years of elementary school and maybe some high school too remembers this. There was always an assignment where you had to draw something like a title page for . . . let's say science class and the next topic being covered in class is the sound and light unit. Sure it's the easiest thing to do as all you do is doodle something and hand it in, but I actually hated doing it. I hated for either one of two reasons (maybe both at times):

• I have no idea what to draw
• I am a bad artist

I never knew the reason why title pages had to be done for science, gym class (this only happened in grade 7) and history class (again I think this only happened one time). I assume this was part of the visual component of the grade but wouldn't a simple model of something suffice?
The title pages are also evaluated. Drawing very little would get you somewhere between no mark to just made it mars. Meeting the minimum requirements no matter how good or bad you draw would get you average near complete marks. Creating something that has more than the minimum requirements as well as having some artistic ability on hand would get the full marks as well as a sticker. When I was in grade 4 there would be some sort of contest where everyone would vote on whose title page is the best and winner gets some sort of prize (either candy or a pencil, something of that sort). The winner was usually someone who had top notch artistic ability, even though it may not be the same person each time.

So even though the art assignments are easy getting good marks on them is not. Maybe the reason I'm ranting about this has to do with how I take criticism and with something that has to do with my childhood. Don't really remember what year it was but I think it might have been grade 2 or grade 3. I was colouring something like the sky or the ocean and the teacher goes to check on me and notices that I was colouring in different directions and tells me that I should colour in one direction. This makes me wonder why abstract artists make a lot of money for painting something like this while something that has more than just a line across the page (ex. trees, animals, a boat maybe) but tell me that I should colour something in one direction? (------ instead of -----||||||)

Then there is visual arts class from grades 7 and 8. I think I might have enjoyed it to some extent as even though the artwork you had to do in that class had to be reflective of something being taught in that class at least you had some creative control over it like the snakes picture below.

Just for fun, craptastic artwork form back in the day:

Grade 8 Heath assignment

This was done for grade 8 gym class for the health class component. The assignment was to create two magazine advertisements: 1 for showing the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and 1 ad targeting young people into smoking and drinking. This happens to be the latter. As you can see one arm is shorter than the other. The copyright 2003 at the bottom was mainly to give it the magazine ad look. Other than that it's a total kid drawing.

Grade 7 Snakes on a spider web assignment

The second one, which I really like, was done back in grade 7 art class. I'm thinking it was more of an activity than an actual assignment. The idea was to draw snakes on a spider web. I think it was originally supposed be snakes upon a zigzag spider web and it eventually became black and white banded snakes on a rainbow explosion. This was displayed as one of the student artworks for open house that year.

Grade 8 Art Class: Mythical Creature

And finally this one. One of the projects was to draw a mythical/imaginary creature. The art teacher wasn't clear if we had to make up the creature or not so I decided to go with the phoenix. Unlike the other two craptacular drawings which were done in coloured pencils, this was done in pastel. The flaming toupee (I'm not sure what to call it) was a suggestion by a classmate of mine (whom I haven't seen in ages). The wings are coloured kind of oddly but it was good enough for the teacher to say "Go find a spot on the wall if you can."




I'm not much of a visual artist and probably the only time I can be caught drawing something is during a lecture when I'm bored. Enjoy these old kid drawings.