Gifted Artist

[Momto4inSoCal]

I have a 4 yo who loves to paint, draw, color - anything to do with art really. I am by no means an art expert but compared to any of my other children and any 4yo art I've seen his drawings are really good. I watched him paint a picture of the hulk and he was blending paint colors and then using water after he had painted to get the shade he wanted. I was looking up ideas on how to help children who like art (since I am not artistic at all) and from what I read early artistic abilities does not necessarily mean the child will be a great artist but generally there is a correlation with high IQ. Has anyone here had a similar experience with their child? How have you encouraged or helped along their art interest?

[ReadingMama1214]

My 4 year old daughter loves to draw and paint. I just provide lots of time to explore materials and create. Some days her work looks like nothing and the next day she is drawing a pretty decent Thomas the Train for her little brother. Our kitchen table is often covered in art supplies and I love it that way. I would let your son create and give him the space and tools to do so. We don't plan to do any formal art for a few years. If our daughter does go to school, it offers a decent art curriculum from K-12. In K I think they focus on art terms "line, blend, etc." and on simpler skills. We don't do anything formal at home. I have seen some kids use youtube videos. But, my daughter is a perfectionist. She gets upset if a drawing or painting isn't "Right" according to her own expectations. So I tend to let her freely create rather than give her something to copy. We are currently working on realizing that it is okay to make mistakes and that art doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful. 

[ReadingMama1214]

Also, I am not sure about Artistic ability and intelligence. My daughter seems fairly intelligent, but is not what I would label as gifted. She does have excellent fine motor skills (hence the love for drawing) and I have read of some correlation between fine motor and math. I'm not sure though. She's been able to hold a pencil correctly since shortly after 1 and hasn't stopped drawing since. 

[wapiti]

For the art interest, at that young age I would simply allow liberal access to the materials and then of course look at art classes when the child is older.

 

FWIW, without looking anything up, my guess would be that very young artistic ability could be connected to intelligence as simply another example of sooner-than-normal development.  From the opposite angle, IME the absence of artistic ability at such an age does not reflect at all on intelligence or on the later development of artistic ability.  I might also think about artistic ability as a combination of a unique visual perspective and fine motor skill; a person could have one or the other or both.

 

With regard to fine motor and math, my personal guess is that either there's no correlation at all or there may be a slight inverse correlation.  (In my house, my mathiest kid has had the most fine motor struggles and my least-mathy kid has the best fine motor skills of the six, though that's my youngest so we'll see.)

Edited February 26, 2016 by wapiti

[Arcadia]

Are you near to Getty? If you are, make a trip there and get some opinion and/or advice.

http://www.getty.edu/museum/

 

No idea about IQ. My dad can create replicas and is fantastic at still life, winning awards at regionals but academic was horribly hard for him. I fail art in school for preK to 12 but cruise and get As easily for academics. My brother is skilled with his hands and won awards too but academics was still hard, less bad than my dad. My mom flop art too. So we are a lopsided family.

[Arcadia]

My ds13 can't draw to save his life and avoids doing so even for the occasional assignment, as his output cannot match the picture in his brain

The only As that I got for art related subject was in computer aided drawing. CNC milling help me craft out lovely metal sculptures. My fine motor skills are a mixed bag. I had to use stencils for lab diagrams but it was the norm when I was in 7th-12th so no one notice that I can't draw a straight line without a ruler. I had a Macintosh and a windows laptop in college for the drawing part of engineering coursework but I usually just hibernate in the CAD/CAM labs since we get 24/7 access.

[RootAnn]

I have an artist. I could tell at a young age that there was something different about the way she drew or even colored (experimenting with shading or textures). She used to take scraps of tissue paper from other people's present and design clothing for stuffed animals. Her skills are great fine motor skills, a high level of creativity & imagination, an ability to concentrate on her art for hours, and a willingness to practice it a ton to get better. She's my least mathy child. She's my least academic child of the girls. She was my latest age-wise to learn to read. I don't know any of my kids' IQs, but I wouldn't guess hers was one of the highest of the kids - probably in the mid-to-lower of the five.

 

I've always been at a loss as to what to do to help her along. You will find many threads on the WTM boards by moms like me asking this very question. Providing the materials, encouraging - especially past that 'perfectionist' stage ReadingMama talks about (it hits extremely hard at one point & most kids will drop their artistic bent at that point because they can't make the image on their paper match the one in their head), and provide the opportunity & training as the child requests/needs it.

 

We've done weekly classes at a major museum (1 1/2 hours away), bought all sorts of supplies & books, and paid for art classes with local people. The best thing that we've found is an artist mentor for her. Her mentor is able to talk about opportunities, pitfalls, challenges, future & current opportunities, and is also teaching her oil painting. Both my daughter & her mentor want to write & illustrate children's books. It is a fun endeavor for them to discuss together.  :coolgleamA:

 

Good luck.

[Momto4inSoCal]

Are you near to Getty? If you are, make a trip there and get some opinion and/or advice.

http://www.getty.edu/museum/

No idea about IQ. My dad can create replicas and is fantastic at still life, winning awards at regionals but academic was horribly hard for him. I fail art in school for preK to 12 but cruise and get As easily for academics. My brother is skilled with his hands and won awards too but academics was still hard, less bad than my dad. My mom flop art too. So we are a lopsided family.

 

We are about an hour from the Getty. I've been thinking about taking a trip down there I think he would love it. He's a twin and his brother is very active and would not do good there though. They don't really like to seperate although I suppose they have to seperate at some point so it might be good to start little trips apart from each other.

 

 

I have an artist. I could tell at a young age that there was something different about the way she drew or even colored (experimenting with shading or textures). She used to take scraps of tissue paper from other people's present and design clothing for stuffed animals. Her skills are great fine motor skills, a high level of creativity & imagination, an ability to concentrate on her art for hours, and a willingness to practice it a ton to get better. She's my least mathy child. She's my least academic child of the girls. She was my latest age-wise to learn to read. I don't know any of my kids' IQs, but I wouldn't guess hers was one of the highest of the kids - probably in the mid-to-lower of the five.

 

I've always been at a loss as to what to do to help her along. You will find many threads on the WTM boards by moms like me asking this very question. Providing the materials, encouraging - especially past that 'perfectionist' stage ReadingMama talks about (it hits extremely hard at one point & most kids will drop their artistic bent at that point because they can't make the image on their paper match the one in their head), and provide the opportunity & training as the child requests/needs it.

 

We've done weekly classes at a major museum (1 1/2 hours away), bought all sorts of supplies & books, and paid for art classes with local people. The best thing that we've found is an artist mentor for her. Her mentor is able to talk about opportunities, pitfalls, challenges, future & current opportunities, and is also teaching her oil painting. Both my daughter & her mentor want to write & illustrate children's books. It is a fun endeavor for them to discuss together.  :coolgleamA:

 

Good luck.

We have a few artist in the family but that gene definitely skipped me so I feel very lost with him. He is a perfectionist but it seems to push him more. He will start, crumple up the paper and start again until he gets it to look like he wants. I gave up working on letters with him due to his perfectionism so he taught himself. I'm really hoping the perfectionism is a phase. He's such a different kid than any of my others and I'm not really sure what to make of him or how to work with him.

[ReadingMama1214]

 

We are about an hour from the Getty. I've been thinking about taking a trip down there I think he would love it. He's a twin and his brother is very active and would not do good there though. They don't really like to seperate although I suppose they have to seperate at some point so it might be good to start little trips apart from each other.

 

We have a few artist in the family but that gene definitely skipped me so I feel very lost with him. He is a perfectionist but it seems to push him more. He will start, crumple up the paper and start again until he gets it to look like he wants. I gave up working on letters with him due to his perfectionism so he taught himself. I'm really hoping the perfectionism is a phase. He's such a different kid than any of my others and I'm not really sure what to make of him or how to work with him.

My daughter seems similar. She has always been a perfectionist, but it has never hindered her. It's always motivated her. She too taught herself to write most letters. We have several artists in the family and I do not see dd stopping any time soo or ever. She loves drawing and the perfectionism seems to come and go. Some days she's okay with mistakes and other days she's crumbling every page. But it Spurs her on to keep trying and I am hoping that her perfectionism is similar to mine and motivates her to succeed, not hinders her.