I don't mean staid or boring, but something which involves some real instruction in realistic and figure drawing.
My 9yo has always shown a lot of talent in drawing, and I have a feeling that if she was given some proper instruction-perhaps a short courseshe could start making the breakthrough to real "serious" realistic drawing. She's always cooing over my drawings and trying to copy them, and sometimes get frustrated when they don't come out looking quite how she expected. I don't fancy myself as an art teacher though! I think she needs to learn from someone who knows how to teach this stuff.
Our various family commitments have made it hard to do any other extra curriculars, other than learning to swim of course. As art seems to be her natural talent, it seems a bit of a shame not to develop this skill.
Unfortunately, it really does seem to be very hard to find proper drawing lessons for this age group. We have tried a couple of "art classes"---they mostly just do craft activities or sort of babysit the kids while they do the same drawing activities they could have done on the kitchen table at home. And it's not that there's anything "wrong" with either of these things, but my whole purpose in paying a class fee is for her to get some actual instruction.
I taught myself to draw realistically when I was a couple of years older than her, by using the Betty Edwards "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" book---it worked really well, and my copy of the book says that kids from 9 or so can start learning realistic drawing in this kind of way. A short course similar to this might be helpful.
We come back to the UK most summers so a short course in London or something like that would work well (location can be flexible though---we often visit one or two cities while we are there). Or, is there such a thing as online drawing courses? I can't quite imagine how such a thing would work, but who knows?