Coloring within the lines - Page 2

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle

First off, not all visual artists agree with each other on philosophy, etc. I only speak for myself - not visual artist at large.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with everything you've said, except that I always thought "coloring" was a fun thing in and of itself - I see coloring and art as apples and oranges. I was rather stiff and inhibited with drawing as a young child, so I loved them for what they were.

To respond to the middle paragraph: art and music are different.

I can (and have ) taught motivated people basic drawing skills in a fairly short amount of time. It really is not that hard to do (if the person being taught is motivated and does not come with "I can't draw!" baggage). It is much harder to help people work on taking chances, being creative, seeing things as a whole in the art world. These soft skills are harder to acquire.

So true! And that's something that happens even to people who can draw and paint very well. A successful artist I know who can't bring himself to break out of the box. His paintings are beautiful and creative, and he really inspired me in some lessons I took with him years ago, but he sticks to realism more than he'd like. He was looking at something of mine I showed him recently and said he wished he could bring himself to break through to that kind of freedom - he's trying to free himself up in various ways, but it's a struggle.

So I can certainly understand your loathing of coloring books - they really can present a wrong impression. Maybe I was luckier than I realized when I was little and a neighbor woman sat down and colored with me one day, filling in all sorts of loose and wild colors, shading and accenting within the spaces instead of coloring each one solidly. It was beautiful, but I was mystified as to how she knew how to do that. I always had those images in my mind after that and realized there was a lot greater potential there to be found. - Lillian

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by Momma Aimee

what is the point of scribbling acorss lines? that does nothing -- it does not accomplsih a goal (the picture) nor does it help the child learn anyhting (to establish order, or to pratice fine mortor)

But do you think pointing out to a child every time she misses the line that she's missed it is really necessary? I remember being all too aware of each line that missed the edge.

Oh darn - got to run to an appointment. Will be back. Lillian

[kathymuggle]

Originally Posted by Lillian J

So I can certainly understand your loathing of coloring books - they really can present a wrong impression.

I think I probably misrepresented myself a little earlier. I do prefer blank paper to colouring books, and I really disagree with telling children to colour between the lines, but I do not dislike colouring in and of itself. I have been known to colour on my kids placematts at restaurants etc. Like a PP, I play with shade, etc. It is not overly creative (for me), but I do find it soothing and often pretty.

It is the insisting by authority figures to stay in the lines that bugs me.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle

I think I probably misrepresented myself a little earlier. I do prefer blank paper to colouring books, and I really disagree with telling children to colour between the lines, but I do not dislike colouring in and of itself. I have been known to colour on my kids placematts at restaurants etc. Like a PP, I play with shade, etc. It is not overly creative (for me), but I do find it soothing and often pretty.

It is the insisting by authority figures to stay in the lines that bugs me.

Ah! Well, that's pretty much the way I feel about it. Coloring can be soothing and pretty, and choosing colors can be fun - but I think adults getting in and meddling with it is not okay. It's one of those childhood things like swinging or hopscotch or whatever that should just be left to children to make their own in their own way. Although I say that wondering if there's someplace where adults actually have gone in and meddled with hopscotch - I can picture practice sessions where children would have line up to take turns improving hopscotch skills . No child enjoys seeing the crayon run outside the lines, but nagging about it would cause more harm than help. This brings to mind the line from the old Pink Floyd song, "Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!" - Lillian

[meetoo]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle

Harm is an interesting word. For some kids you may be teaching conformity and some may blow it off.

As there is no need to colour between the lines (fine motor skills can be taught in so many many other ways) I wouldn't risk it. Art is a gazinga point for me though, lol. YMMV.

My son went through a phase where his favorite quiet activity was to color his in his super hero coloring books then cut out the characters. He was extremely creative with these "puppets". I'm not saying anyone should force a child to color who hates it. At the same time I don't believe there is any inherent "risk" to coloring....Some kids really like to color! I like to color lol.


I'm leaving this up but i should have read ahead.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by Momma Aimee

i still at 38 struggle with fine motor, my hand writting is really bad, adn i do stuggle to color inside the lines -- i grew up in the schools of theh 70's that were all about CREATIVITY and really it did nothing for me, then or now.

Fine motor skills can be developed in lots and lots of other ways - using scissors, tearing strips of paper for crafts, beading on string, playdough and clay, doing mazes, doing dot to dot, other crafts, and by hand to hand swinging on monkey rings! Here's an article that lists many different ways to develop fine motor skills, and coloring within the lines is not one of them. If you google to find ways of developing fine motor skills, coloring doesn't come up - it would be something that could benefit from developing good fine motor skills in other ways, however.

I used to attend lectures by an educational specialist trained in sensory integration who always made a big point that hand to hand swinging on monkey bars was the quickest way she'd ever seen to improve handwriting ability. There's a place for finding and following order, and children tend to seek it out on their own, but I think that's a whole different thing from dealing with fine motor skills that have their own challenges.

- Lillian

[littlest birds]

Taken without the baggage, coloring a predrawn picture is simply a structure on which to do something else. It's like when someone makes a quilt and they choose to used a traditional pattern but choose the fabrics for color interplay only. The lines are set. The colors are open ended. (Choice of course is the issue but isn't it always with everything when it comes to school?) Of course if the lines are uninterestin/unaesthetic lines they are not very stimulating.

If you study art, you will be posed certain design problems to resolve, certain structures to do so within. Limitations or boundaries are built into media, and we would be lost in amorphousness without those restrictions.

I tend not to have worries about stifling creativity. Because creativity is pretty darn obstinately a given in our family. Creativity can be stifled but we don't seem to have that problem; the worst I do is keep materials from being extravagantly wasted and that is only at extremes.

Coloring in the lines in particular is a skill not an "art". But can be fun. It can even be creative (of course we like coloring mandalas and the like which seem more so perhaps just because they engage with our sense of beauty as we color) I think this type of creative is still "crafty" rather than "art" but that is true of SO many art projects which are still wonderful projects and include lots of creativity too.

I agree with the PP who considered our society's "everything goes" attitude toward visual art. We fear the idea of suggesting that there are correct ways to go about things, that art can be judged for its design qualities, the success of the artist in communicating with an audience, how fluent they are with their media, a work's internal coherence with itself, its technical issues etc. and I think it is funny. The comparisons with musicians are legitimate to me. That said, anybody can be an amateur and do what they want and have fun and keep it personal--who cares. But to act like artistic merit can't be judged because you might step on someone's creative toes is silly. I saw so many art students in college complain because the teachers had no right to judge their work because it was "self-expression."

All that said, one of the worst things kids pick up whether we want them to or not is the idea of making a drawing in pen or pencil and coloring it after they draw the lines. Unless it's part of a particular effect like the look of comic art, it usually works out badly. A color image should be composed with color, or at least value, from the beginning. Color paintings are composed with shapes rather than line. So coloring inside the lines encourages us to later think we make paintings by drawing our own lines and then adding color--a strategy which IMO we should unlearn if we are to become painters. This is a really basic concept in art, but very few people learn it unless they are trying to become professional/serious.

It really is just like learning to play scales/keys. There is a language to learn in art and although you can take pleasure in creating without learning more than you acquire with little effort and via intuition there is a lot more to being fluent in the language than that. This is more than just technical ability such as how to use a medium. And this is not the enemy of "expression" but the tools for reaching your goals if you have them. (Children's goals of course are not the same as the professional artist's, but they do have goals which are sometimes shaped by what they see of professional artists' work and older children are often particularly interested in acquiring more serious skills to achieve their ideas. Whatever a child's goal it should be honored and responded to.)

[kathymuggle]

Originally Posted by Dandelionkid

I was surprised they still teach this in kindergarten as per my dd's friend. Yuck. I really feel a sense of panic sometimes that my DD didn't get to do kindergarten (it's so much fun!!) but stuff like this makes me mostly glad we didn't. One of my pet peeves.

I was re-reading the Op and it reminded me of a story my friend tells.

Her son had enterred 7th grade. The teacher gave them a workbook with a picture on it and told them to colour it. Her son refused (politely). The teacher called home over it - and the father answered and said "you have got to be kidding me". The teacher was smart enough to be sheepish about the whole thing and admit that insisting grade7's colour was perhaps an error on her part, lol.

Whether "colouring in the lines" meets with someones approval or not, I do think some teachers overly rely on colouring pages and the like as time fillers/busy work.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by littlest birds

I agree with the PP who considered our society's "everything goes" attitude toward visual art. We fear the idea of suggesting that there are correct ways to go about things, that art can be judged for its design qualities, the success of the artist in communicating with an audience, how fluent they are with their media, a work's internal coherence with itself, its technical issues etc. and I think it is funny. The comparisons with musicians are legitimate to me. That said, anybody can be an amateur and do what they want and have fun and keep it personal--who cares. But to act like artistic merit can't be judged because you might step on someone's creative toes is silly. I saw so many art students in college complain because the teachers had no right to judge their work because it was "self-expression."

Ooh, this is a debate that could go on and on and on... The first thing that comes to mind is that I know a lot of talented working artists, some who also teach, who have very strong opinions that are in direct opposition to those of other talented working artists. I'm always amazed when I hear those kinds of opinions expressed - although I don't recall whether I've ever offered the comment, "You know they feel that same way about your own art, right?" Who is the judge to be? And I remember all too well the way we could walk down the halls in the art department at college, looking at student work on exhibit, and be able to easily identify which instructors each of the exhibited students mainly studied with - a style that would not fly with one of the other instructors. I remember one day having one of the figure drawing instructors take my charcoal and tighten up my drawing, only to get into a different class later that day and have a different figure drawing instructor take my charcoal and start scribbling broadly across the page to loosen it up. It goes on like that with all the other media as well. Landscape painter Wolf Kahn had a very hard time being accepted by his future wife's family of abstract artists during the time when representational artists were out of vogue - they looked down their noses at him. Lots of schools of artistic thought have been looked down upon throughout history and then held up as brilliant. I could rant on and on - the whole thing drives me crazy. - Lillian

[Marsupialmom]

Originally Posted by Lillian J

Fine motor skills can be developed in lots and lots of other ways - using scissors, tearing strips of paper for crafts, beading on string, playdough and clay, doing mazes, doing dot to dot, other crafts, and by hand to hand swinging on monkey rings! Here's an article that lists many different ways to develop fine motor skills, and coloring within the lines is not one of them. If you google to find ways of developing fine motor skills, coloring doesn't come up - it would be something that could benefit from developing good fine motor skills in other ways, however.

I used to attend lectures by an educational specialist trained in sensory integration who always made a big point that hand to hand swinging on monkey bars was the quickest way she'd ever seen to improve handwriting ability. There's a place for finding and following order, and children tend to seek it out on their own, but I think that's a whole different thing from dealing with fine motor skills that have their own challenges.

- Lillian

If you look at that link, coloring is one of the ways to help motor skills. Typically this is a touch of word semantics but if you have a blank sheet of baby it is considered drawing/painting. If you are filling in a shape is consider coloring.

[littlest birds]

FWIW I am not talking about style. I appreciate many styles, I dislike others, but regardless I can usually tell if the artist appears to have a goal that they are accomplishing successfully or not so successfully. I like work that is totally different from my own. And even what I don't like I can tell if the artist is fluent in expressing what they are expressing.

I also like art that is not as "skilled" if it has other strengths. Love love love a lot of it. It is easy to tell when a picture is being made powerful by a great intuitive sense of design even if I don't care for the subject or overall effect. But it is frustrating if an artist has something wonderful they are attempting to do but there are problems that get in the way. If a musician is playing discordant notes deliberately as part of their expression then it can be wonderful. Some discordant notes by accident can be wonderful too. But if a musician can't find the notes and can't control their results then they don't end up creating the music they intend or want others to hear and do not get a response that matches their intent. That's not wonderful.

An art teacher who imposes their personal style isn't a very good art teacher IMO. I've also never had an art teacher make any marks on my work. And a great working artist may become a teacher but hardly understand teaching at all and may not be doing much to help his/her students develop the gifts they have in themselves. A teacher like that is doing the adult equivalent of expecting students to color inside the lines. There are actually teachers who don't do that.

There are aspects of "knowing the language" which have nothing to do with personal taste or what's "in vogue."

[mojobin]

I am a public school (gasp! lol!) kindergarten teacher trained in early childhood development. I believe coloring in the lines is an important skill for children to learn. And not only for those who 'need' fine motor support. All 5 year olds need fine motor support. It does enhance fine motor and visual motor skills (hand-eye coordination) as well as teach children to take their time. You can find beautiful images to color and coloring can be meditative. (I believe Mothering had an article related to coloring and meditation once.) It doesn't need to be viewed as a task to be completed. Children can usually find pictures that they are interested in coloring.

[kathymuggle]

I thought this was interesting: (note how the first article cited was from Mothering in 1986!)

http://www.susanstriker.com/wrong.html

http://www.toddlerstoday.com/article...playtime-4519/


There are many art educators who do not think colouring pages are appropriate (particularly when over -used/ insisting on colouring in the lines). There are many, many ways to work on fine motor skills without the use of colouring pages. I just do not see why we need to go there, when it is hardly best practice in art education, and there are so many easy alternatives.

[HeliMom]

As an Art teacher I kind of think coloring inside the lines of a contour drawing is not an activity for elementary school.

IMO in kindergarten children should be learning the primary colors and how to mix them. I see you mixed blue and yellow together what happened when you did that? What happens when you make quick movements? slow ones? When you put one color on top of another what happens? Technique is learned through exploration, reflection and understanding that ,as my teacher loved to say, "physical actions have visual consequences." We all need to become familiar with the physical limitations of a medium first. Coloring with crayons is different then coloring with markers, which is different than coloring with paints. Different sized brushes/ points will behave differently. I truly feel these are more important ideas that are foundations to (2D) art making. I think children can make these discoveries if we offer them the right opportunities.


Coloring has it's place but I actually feel it's with the older more accomplished artist. Maybe in a lesson in cartooning or animation.

[Dandelionkid]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle

For that reason: that creativity (colouring outside the lines) is harder to nurture than skills, I am against colouring pages.

This is exactly what rubs me the wrong way about coloring in the lines- it seems like an easy skill to learn if needed someday but taking a child's head outside the box, once it gets into the box, seems a lot harder to accomplish.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by littlest birds

An art teacher who imposes their personal style isn't a very good art teacher IMO. I've also never had an art teacher make any marks on my work.

But there are unfortunately a whole lot of art teachers who do impose their personal style. I've had both kinds. As for marking on a student's work, there are those who will politely ask if you'd mind - but politeness was not a faculty requirement at the state college I had those oafs in. I've never wanted anyone messing with my piece - not because of it being so precious, but because it puts an identifiable different spot in the middle of it that distracts.

And a great working artist may become a teacher but hardly understand teaching at all and may not be doing much to help his/her students develop the gifts they have in themselves. A teacher like that is doing the adult equivalent of expecting students to color inside the lines. There are actually teachers who don't do that.

Absolutely - I've experienced the full spectrum, from the incredibly obnoxious to the very gracious and supportive, but most of them pretty opinionated about one thing or another.

There are aspects of "knowing the language" which have nothing to do with personal taste or what's "in vogue."

One would think - but when personal opinions run as deep as they do in so many, it can get pretty muddied. - Lillian

[ollyoxenfree]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle

I read your first paragraph and thought you were being argumentative, but then I read your last that you are seeking to understand, so I will give it a shot, lol.

.........
I can (and have ) taught motivated people basic drawing skills in a fairly short amount of time. It really is not that hard to do (if the person being taught is motivated and does not come with "I can't draw!" baggage). It is much harder to help people work on taking chances, being creative, seeing things as a whole in the art world. These soft skills are harder to acquire.

For that reason: that creativity (colouring outside the lines) is harder to nurture than skills, I am against colouring pages. Now if your kid has been introduced to them and asks for them, go for it. My kids have used them at friends houses, etc...but I never tell them to colour between the lines, and I do not purchase colouring books. It is blank paper in this house, lol.

No, I wasn't trying to be argumentative. At least, I wasn't trying to be belligerently so, LOL. Thank you for your thoughtful response, and to the others who provided their thoughts as well. I wish I could have responded earlier.

I haven't found that creativity is harder to achieve or nurture in children. I think children are naturally creative. They are also far more resilient and stronger than they are often given credit for. I find children like challenges and often rise to them. I just don't think giving them a colouring sheet will squash all creative impulse out of them.

I think children are capable of learning some technical skill without losing their creativity. The key is to support and guide them in a positive manner. So for me, it's an issue of fostering good attitudes.

If they are having trouble keeping between the lines or concerned about straying outside or getting frustrated, then I think it's a matter of helping them focus on the positives ("You've done a lovely job with the colours you picked out." and "What nice shading here") and putting away the colouring sheet and saying "You can always try again".

There's a supportive and guiding approach to handle anything a child is learning to do, whether a child sounds an off-note when playing scales or strays outside the lines when colouring.

Originally Posted by kathymuggle

Colouring within the lines is not what art is about. Yet... colouring is seen by our culture as an art activity. I do not think we should send mixed messages so I avoid. I maintain there are other ways to support fine motor development without mixing art into the mix in an inappropriate way.

There may be other ways, by I personally don't have a problem with using this way. Lots of kids like to use crayons and coloured pencils and markers and they have fun with it.

I actually don't recall ever buying colouring books for my dc, but I know we had some in the house - presents from grandparents and birthdays etc. They are very creative kids, who enjoy art and re-make vintage clothes and silkscreen t-shirts. They seem to have survived colouring between the lines nicely.

Originally Posted by Lillian J

Has anyone ever met an adult or older child who has never conquered the skill of coloring within the lines? It's just something - like so many other things we worry needlessly about - that comes in its own good time. - Lillian

Well, yes. A few people have posted in this thread about these struggles. Like any neurocognitive/psychomotor skill, some have a harder time mastering it and benefit from practice. I've worked with older children and adults who have neuromotor dysfunctions to varying degrees. It doesn't come in its own good time, without a lot of work and practice.

In any event, I suspect that the objections to colouring within the lines would apply no matter what age the task is assigned, since the objections are based mostly on artistic merit of the task and whether it kills creativity.

Originally Posted by Lillian J

But do you think pointing out to a child every time she misses the line that she's missed it is really necessary? I remember being all too aware of each line that missed the edge.

I'd say that's poor teaching, not a poor task.

Criticizing every mistake is bad, no matter what a child is trying to do. It would be equally unnecessary to point out every wrong note that a child plays or every misstep in learning to skate or every mispronounced word or every badly formed letter.

Almost anything a child attempts is open to pointing out mistakes made. That doesn't mean we shouldn't let them try things. If someone is critical about colouring outside the lines, they are probably overly critical about everything else too.

And littlest birds, I guess I could have just done a full quote of what you wrote and a "Yeah, that!!" icon. I found what you wrote very interesting and agreed with your thoughts.

[Lillian J]

I've been thinking about the issue of knowing the language, and that got me to thinking about the artists I know who are working passionately to get people to embrace and experience art as something way bigger that exists beyond all the notions that have limited them. It's incredibly beautiful to see what can happen when people break loose from all that. Art is my driving passion, and I do find it important to think way outside of whatever boxes it's traditionally discussed within - my goal is always to push it even further. So I'm coming to the discussion with a whole lot of personal experience in seeking and supporting just the opposite of the more traditional and mainstream ideas of what art is and how it can be judged and defined. And that brings in a different language yet, so it gets complicated, because I feel very passionately about this, and I can't really agree with the language more traditionally used around art. So there's a different take on it - I don't think I made that clear before - and I guess I'll just have to agree to disagree with a lot that's said about art. Lillian

[littlest birds]

Even if you are pushing boundaries, it's good to understand the rules you want to break. It's better to be a rebel with a cause, so to speak. Each work makes its own rules, each artist is creating their own language, even more traditional artists. But if you know what you are doing you are deciding with some clarity what rules you are setting for yourself, what makes them distinctive, what rules you are ignoring and what purpose you have in doing so, etc. If you are enlarging the language, then where did you start and where are you headed? You can create the future partly because you have a relationship with the past--not a vacuum.

You can't deliberately do the opposite of traditional unless you have a pretty darn clear idea what "traditional" is and what parts of it you want to move away from, and what you mean by moving in that direction. So you need to also know the language to change it IMO. The language is owned by the community an so your influence in changing it has to understand its existence in the first place. Whatever issues you take with traditional artistic ideas only have meaning if you know what those those traditional ideas are know why you are trying to change them.

And back to original/earlier topic. If you want to fill a 2D space with color the understanding needed is what color does within a space which is about shapes rather than edge lines. Then shapes have value and tone and push and pull and tension or stability and etc. That's the basic language of paint on surface for anyone from el greco to wolf kahn to pollock to rothko to infinity. What does the artist want to do with shapes of color? You can get rid of flat surface, you can get rid of frames and galleries, etc. You can only really change the shape aspect of painting if you change media and are no longer painting. So if you choose to paint you learn to work with shapes of color and then you can do anything you like. ....So, say someone learns to think that "painterly" way and then revisits linemaking filled in with color on purpose. (Happens all the time!) They will be deciding between various possibilities that they understand--how much to emphasize shape or not, how to draw attention to line, how to deliberately manipulate the relevance of the elements they are choosing to work with and what makes the effect of their choices different and desirable to them, etc. Whereas the person who cannot think of any approach to painting except first drawing contour lines is illiterate in that medium. Capable of naive genius, intuitive, intriguing, satisfying art --MAYBE-- but also missing something relevant to anyone thinking "education" which is kind of where the OP started. Is coloring in the lines bad education? The answer being yes AND no. We often end up needing to unlearn the *lines drawn separately--then color* way of thinking later on. It often gets in our way. So in that way it is bad. Even if done for motor skills' sake the other art implications do soak in.

Art education is basically a process of getting really really familiar with what your options are and therefore giving yourself many options. this would be done by learning about many ways others have tried and developing your skills and exploring to see what happens and considering from many perspectives what visual effects mean to yourself and others. Things that limit our options early may limit us forever, depending on circumstances.

[Lillian J]

Originally Posted by littlest birds

Even if you are pushing boundaries, it's good to understand the rules you want to break. It's better to be a rebel with a cause, so to speak.

Here's where we just have to disagree. I'm not referring to pushing boundaries but to a whole different process. I'm someone who understands the rules, having started in the 60s, but I simply don't feel that art as I know it today involves rules to understand or break. Period. Lillian