How to get better at drawing, painting & art?

[FennelMash]

DD 10 (year 5) loves art and is interested but her skills are nothing special compared to many in her class according to her. She has a really keen eye for detail and is quite visual in what she perceives and feels sad and frustrated not to have any artistic skill.

For maths or English, we could, in theory get a tutor, but how does a child improve her art skills?

Our nearby university runs classes for kids.

Sorry, the art school which is part of the uni

I'm channelling my DD here, who is now in her first year at art school! She would say: just draw. A lot. Watching Youtube tutorials can be fun, and classes can help, but there's no substitute for endless drawing. (Also, DD found that having photography as a hobby worked in parallel with her artistic skills, it's about finding interesting compositions.)

www.art-k.co.uk/our-approach/
Are any of these near you?

To follow that... the best thing that we did was get our DD as many sketchbooks as she wanted, and not ask to see what she was doing. She found it liberating to spend hours and hours just drawing without any pressure to show anyone else. This took off in secondary school at around Year 9. Obviously everyone is different, though!

She has plenty of time to develop artistic skills. Get her involved in art club if there is one at school. The only way to improve, is to practise.

Second getting a sketch book so she can draw and spend lots of time on it. Draw from observation, draw from photos. Perhaps even get her one of those colouring books for adults to practise shading. I

Draw a lot. If she likes thinking about drawing as a skill, there is the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” which, whilst I don’t agree with everything in it, explains why drawing from observation is hard and suggests ways to improve.

Well, that makes gift giving easy as there are lots of materials that would be appropriate. I'd suggest a student quality set of acrylic paints (tubes), a few brushes and a pad of acrylic paper. Let her experiment and explore art channels on YouTube as there are lots of excellent ones there. Or ask around if anyone has art and craft magazines they don't need.

The other thing I'd suggest is visiting galleries, local or national, and looking at art and how it is made, or even better seeing if any artists nearby have open studios at certain times of year.

I suggest looking up the Seven Elements of Art and get her to work her way through them.

Try one of Mark Kistler's books; he's an excellent teacher.

Practice loads! Experiment with different art materials, a range of papers and keep sketchbooks.

your DD could also try 3D stuff like animation or making sculptures. Fashion drawing can be fun or designing patterns/prints. Main thing is to have fun at that age.

I can’t paint for toffee but I’m a graphic designer and have had a pretty successful career!

Maybe also visit various galleries in London and the v and a etc? She will see there is so much more to art and painting that isn't just copying as realistically as possible. It can be as much about how you interpret the world around you.

Katie jobling on YouTube has simple but informative tutorials. Her and someone called Robin Sealark (the older videos) got me into painting and now I've sold paintings for thousands. I still love watching them and I'm sure there's many more YouTubers that will be suitable for 10 year olds. Best of luck to her, its the most wonderful hobby. I'm biased, but please encourage it!!

Thank you! lot of good ideas and quite encouraging to hear that drawing for herself as often as she likes is useful.