My son Hagen is now 5 years old. Even though he has a lot of fun with his coloring book, he recently expressed the desire to draw stuff for himself. But it's always so complicated which leads to weird lines going all over the place because he wants to include every detail.
He has to learn to draw things simple and reduce it to essentials. I can tell him that a thousand times but he his five years old so I decided to rather show him an example instead.
"Let us start with a simple house, ok? Just the essentials would be walls and a roof, maybe a door and a window."
I had just drawn two walls, a door and a window (at ground floor level) and was about to put the roof on top when Hagen asked to put in a second floor. After all, our house has one, too. So this house must have a second floor.
Ok, we will draw two more windows at second floor level and then put the roof on top.
At this point he decided he would rather have a dragon picture.
"First complete one project before you start the next." is the main lesson we currently have to teach him because he gets distracted too often, abandons one thing, and starts another.
"Daddy, why not make it a dragon house? That way we can complete the first and start the second at the same time."
Yeah, try arguing with a five year old.
So I added the dragon outline. Of course it had to be a fire spitting dragon. You know, at that age they can not add beyond the number 10 but they know that dragons spit fire.
"But Daddy?" he started and I had a baaaaaad feeling I was not done yet.
"What if I want to draw something piraty?"
"Piraty?"
"Yes, piraty? Can you make it a pirate house?"
"It is already a dragon house. How do I make it a pirate house?"
"Put a pirate flag on it?"
So I added a flag.
"Dad?" went his mouth and my head went "Of course. He won't stop while there's still empty space on this piece of paper"
"Yes my dear?" Sooo glad they don't recognize sarcasm yet at that age.
"Can you show me the letters that make up my name? Maybe put it on top?"
That little sneaky devil actually managed to engage me as his pencil monkey to get a picture how he likes it but did not have to draw for himself. I only realized that when we were done already. So proud of him!
Picture drawn by me and photographed with Xiamo Redmi Note 10. You may use it or parts of it as long as you link this post as a source.
