I received art training at a small homeschool art program called Masters School of Art when I was a young student. The years that I attended were some of the most formative seasons of my education and that training not only gave me joy in drawing but that it also awoke in me a desire to seek challenge and grow in virtue through the process of perseverance. The mastery of certain techniques gave me confidence in my ability to learn, which improved every other area of my education. I want to give my students the same confidence and the same capabilities. I want them to fall in love with beauty and I want to witness and foster their excitement as they realize that they too are capable of replicating it.

Rudimentary drawing exercises are the foundation of my curriculum. These include mirror images, upside down drawing, blind contours, & shading exercises. They are designed to target specific skills and emphasize practicing those skills. It is through practicing these skills that the hand and the eye become accustomed to pencil pressure, shape, and proportion.

The thought behind setting aside so much time for one drawing project is the latin axiom “non multa, sed multum” - not many but much. The goal is not to split our focus on many pieces, but to make much of one. The primary project allows students to see what deep work can be accomplished when they set their mind to just one strenuous task.

We live in an age of immediacy. Information is at our fingertips with the click of a button. As any scholar, tradesmen, or parent can attest, growth and mastery are far from immediate. In fact, they are slow and often painful. Because of technology, children are not living in a time where this can be easily seen. Strenuous work that requires patience and perseverance should be given to children as they develop or they will not be receiving the equipment needed for a life of learning. Art is one way for children to observe and experience what patience produces. It is a pathway to a life of virtue.

All children are capable of creating visual art. Some are more or less inclined to it, but all are capable. Students can develop the muscle memory needed to apply the right amount of pencil pressure and they can train their eyes to see shadows, depth, and symmetry. There can be no formative development in these areas without practice. Children are able to train in these skills, just like they learn all other unfamiliar life skills. Arguably, the most crucial part of art development is practice. Many children, and even more adults, believe that if they aren’t “naturally artistic” as a child then they “can’t draw”. This is incorrect. Practice enables you to draw. Many brains are not wired in a way that makes math sums automatically doable. People must develop their understanding of math through strenuous brain labor. There is little difference when it comes to the skill of drawing. A student's brain and motor skills might not be wired in a way that makes art particularly “easy” but just like every student learns math, so every student can learn to draw and copy basic shapes. Doing math over and over is what improves your mathematical abilities. Drawing over and over is what builds artistic skill. Are those with a true natural inclination to art more likely to become professional sculptors, muralists, and illustrators? Probably. But does this make the uninclined any less able to learn? Not in the least.

Every skill a child develops - from language learning to emotional regulation, from table manners to playing a sport - they learn through countless acts of imitation. My students learn to draw by first replicating other peoples’ drawings, photos, and real life objects on their own papers. Something can’t be generated from nothing. You can not expect a skillful result when you hand a pencil to a child and say “draw me a picture”. We occasionally balk at this idea in relation to creating art because we often see it as something that needs to come from inside us as individuals. The modern mind prizes individual expression and creativity so highly that we seem to have disregarded the knowledge that children can only use what they have been given. You cannot build something without raw building material. The human imagination is incredible and the things that we can create from our minds are unique, but all are based upon the replication of something in real life and the skills to create are all based on imitating those who already possess them. The great artists of the past utilized imitation of the masters to grow their own skills, often in the form of a formal apprenticeship. My students, like apprentices, are taught the building blocks of drawing by practicing the fundamentals of seeing and representing what they see. The intent is that when they arrive at a place where they do want to express their own creativity or say something unique through a visual medium like drawing, they will have the skills to effectively and persuasively communicate it.