Teaching a 3 years old child to paint better

[sophiajannie]

Hi everyone!

I have 2 daughters. The older one is three years old, and she is quite talented at drawing. Not just my parental bias; a child psychologist confirmed that she draws at a level of a 5 years old. And most people with little kids are shocked to see her drawings.
Didn't come as a big surprise: both me and my wife were good at drawing (relative to our peers) at the pre-school age. But later we didn't do anything about it, so these days our drawing skills are mediocre. I would love to provide our daughter support to do better than us. The problem is, having no formal artistic education myself, I don't know where to start, other than giving her the pencils and paper.
I remembered how much I enjoyed reading the artistic debates on the Wesnoth forum, and that I had big respect for the game art, so this felt like the natural place to ask:
As a parent, how can I best support my daughter (currently 3 years old) to fully develop her drawing skills? What resources or techniques would you recommend for a pre-school child? Any books or videos? What to focus on? In which order to teach the individual skills? etc.
I will provide some examples of her drawing in the following comment soon.

I BBC was an art teacher for 25 years. Leave her alone to do what she wants. She’s 3.

Maybe at about 8 or 9 do observational drawing. Art galleries about 10 or 11

But at 3 just buy her materials and leave her to go with it. She’s 3.

I was not an art teacher at the BBCcand don’t k ow how it got in there!

Give over, she’s 3.

Give her lots of different media & just let her go for it. Inside, out in the garden, let her imagination run wild. Lots of books she can look at herself (sitting down & lecturing a toddler about the Great Masters is futile) & just let her draw!

My daughter’s an illustrator & gives speeches worldwide at conferences about her art; we did nothing more formal than make sure she has plenty of paper & pencils, pens, paints, crayons & just let her create!

Jesus Christ. You're going to sap all the fun out of drawing for your daughter. And she won't want to draw. I wouldn't be surprised if your efforts are counter productive - let her be! Let her draw freely and enjoy it. Don't be pushy, 3 is too young. There's plenty of time to develop her skills when she's a bit older, if she wants to.

Agree with other posters to give her materials and space.

I would.add that there are many groups for small children that may include "art" which you could attend because in my experience those offer the children a different type of material or approach than at home. I remember taking ds to a play and stay at our local children's centre and one of the art things they used to do was put up a massive canvas and let the kids paint on it with brushes, sponges, feathers, hands etc (ds wouldn't go near it, but other kids loved it!!). These are the sort of things you probably wouldn't do at home much either due to space or just because of not thinking about it.