Teachers are afraid of tragic topics like fire: let’s have our children draw only something joyful, bright, and cheerful! Both boys and girls! But scary, philosophical, and even dark themes attract children, not to mention teenagers, like a magnet. Especially boys – they often draw outwardly aggressive things: monsters, vampires, zombies, fights or battles. Girls are naturally inclined to peace and love. The tragic is often hidden inside them. The hidden pain manifests itself in an image or name: someone lonely, unhappy, offended – an animal or a toy. All children think of the terrible and the terrible, and the sad too, and sometimes they live in it – in books, movies, worse – if in reality.
…I’ve seen so many nondescript children’s works depicting Christmas! It’s not easy for even adult artists to depict people and saints. But what if we take the biblical theme more broadly, give it freedom of choice – plot, symbols? Then the Noah’s Ark, a house–ship with a red sun (Sasha, 6th grade), floats among the solid purple water. In the night color, there is a majestic Death without a face, walking with a scythe against a background of crosses: “An ominous dream, anticipating the end of the world – Apacalypsis. The reign of death and the transformation of the world into hell, heaven into the confluence of two spaces, and apart from death and eternal Torment, nothing foreshadows emptiness” (author’s spelling, Denis, 9th grade). Everything was mixed up: monsters, heaven and earth, and colors – to the point of complete confusion – in the fifth-grader’s painting. And what kind of color harmony can there be if the “End of the World” has come?
Children have no rules: another boy, along with unknown monsters crawling, walking, flying under the red sun, wrote directly across the sky in the same thick red gouache: “The sky of darkness.” The finished name of the thriller…
Sasha (5th grade) has the main colors in the set: red, yellow, blue should be the third, but he has purple. The symmetrical design shows a red-and-gold, patterned, solemn gate, but the purple color adds a gloomy tension. The name is amazing, you can’t guess: “How the devil sees paradise.” How? – in the form of a wall with a dazzlingly bright front gate, but… inaccessible and closed to devils.
An important feature: in art lessons, unlike in other subjects, all children vary greatly in their abilities, degree of learning, and love of the subject. For example, one child attended art school from the first grade and draws enviably, while the other hardly ever painted at home. And among classmates, he’s afraid to show it and plays the fool, disrupting the lesson so as not to fall under ridicule (I take extremes).
Do you suppose that even with an inept drawing, the mental image of a painting can be brilliant or incredibly accurate? A ninth–grader has a sad watercolor: at the bottom is a wide strip of boring brown earth (and what else is it if painting training has passed by?). It’s raining over the ground: chaotic pale purple rain lines on a white background. Above is a stormy sky with dirty yellow lightning. There are three of them – God is angry, and not weakly! On the right, two pale human silhouettes are barely noticeable on a white background, painted in very diluted black watercolor. Faceless transparent, ghostly shadows rest against the edge of the painting and seem about to leave it. This is “Exile from paradise.” Do I need more details about when this happened? In this case, incompetence and lack of time give an advantage: with a minimum of funds, maximum expressiveness.
And what do the girls draw?
The delicate, attentive 11-year–old Masha has a patterned painting: on a thick green background, in the very middle there is a huge red “Apple”, and not just an apple: it is radiant, yellow rays radiate from it in a circle to the edges of the leaf. He was wrapped around several times like a boa constrictor by a gray snake. Rather– the Serpent! There are four small red apples in the corners of the painting. Or are they hearts? And on the right are two blue clouds. How is the memory of paradise life? Or maybe it’s Adam and Eve, transformed into clouds? Or their souls? Amazing color coding, an amazing world, multi-layered, elegant in meaning in such a concise and very decorative work.
Fifth graders Irina, Oksana and Masha conceived a collage. A densely shaded purple gouache lake or sea is an ocean. Three white swans made of white cloth. In the middle of the lake is a green, grass–covered patchwork hill. A white angel with foil wings stands on it. There are two silver butterflies above the lake. A big pale yellow sun and lots and lots of white gulls. And this whole idyll is called “Angel Hill”.
Do you remember the poem “About Boys and Girls” (what they are made of), beautifully translated from English by Samuel Marshak?
One day I suggested that the studios draw not a simple, but an animated tree. And the boys had: a killer tree, a zombie tree, a poisonous tree, etc., and the girls had a tree of God, a tree of love, a tree of joy, a tree of peace, a tree of the rainbow.
Thanks to the girls! While the boys are fighting with something or someone, they are saving the world with kindness and light.
A physicist I know used to say, “A man in nature is expendable.” I remember an anecdotal phrase: “Men are accidentally surviving boys.” In general, there is something to think about when looking at the free drawings of boys and girls.
The main thing is to inspire: with a theme, a technique, a texture, a material – and to let the souls of young artists go free. And do not be afraid of monsters, ghosts, vampires, fights and battles in the drawings of boys. “We still need to persuade them to draw the good and the bright, to contribute to this!” – most colleagues will object to me. Definitely. So this is kind and bright, if you understand that a boy, a teenager, lives his victories in these drawings, and lives out his fears. Let us recall a primitive magical ritual: in order for the hunt to be successful, the painted animal was first killed. Did the hunters die in the boys?
What’s not to be afraid of in girls’ drawings? It’s mostly scary: endless hearts, pets, fairies, princesses, queens. The themes of love, family, and childbirth are constantly on their minds. There are no taboo topics – there is a right or wrong, traumatic or understanding reaction from the teacher (parent). And eternal topics worry them no less, if not more, than adults. And children, great taciturn people, are more likely to express their problems in drawing than in conversation.
Finally, let’s talk about the beautiful. As in the famous meme where the seller of “fish” laid them out on the shore, so big and shiny, and the cats sit decorously, as at a royal reception, and look at them. “Are you selling fish?” “No, I’m showing you. It’s beautiful.” And what could be more beautiful than princesses?
In a certain class, they were going to put on I don’t remember which French fairy tale. There was a prince who was going to get married. And so we were asked to create a gallery of beauties as decorations, so that there would be someone to choose from. And in a solid format: a Watman or a half-watman. A task for fifth and seventh grades. Many worked in teams and in pairs. I’ve often practiced this: it’s more fun and work can be done faster with someone you like.
Do you think boys of this age can-want-to-be able to draw a beautiful princess on a par with girls? The theme is kind of girly.
And Sasha and Grisha’s sixth graders had a question.: “Can I draw an ugly princess?” I replied: “Come on!”
What did they do? The princess is absolutely charming in her ugliness. A blonde with short pigtails, a gold crown, and pince–nez-maybe she’s a scientist? In a yellow and blue fluffy dress, with a luxurious bow on the skirt and bows on the sleeves. Jewelry was not offended: rings, bracelets, a pendant. She went out for a walk: that’s why the path with the palace was painted, and the tree with the bird in the nest next to it, so that she wouldn’t be bored.
Honestly, I don’t want to offend the beautiful princesses, but if I were a prince, I would choose her, she’s too unusual. However, in the process of creation, a princess from Africa appeared – with a beautiful green face, in an orange dress, in a patterned blue-orange headdress against a background of yellow sky and blue sea. And even an oriental prince in a turban, drawn by a girl, for some lost princess from another fairy tale.
And it doesn’t matter that the performance didn’t take place, but the collection of beauties was created, and any of them can be lucky enough to become the bride of the prince.
