Everyone who has a baby at home must have gone through this crazy stage -
Suddenly one day I came home and found that the child had transformed into an artist without any instructions. , walls, beds, and even long-haired pets have not escaped the traces of their paintbrushes...
Some parents choose to prohibit their children from writing anymore, and of course some parents choose to encourage their children to take more brush.
Adults can hardly understand what a child drawing for the first time draws. Their paintings are as incomprehensible as Picasso's. What exactly is inside this little head?
Our human brain is divided into left and right brains. The left brain handles cognitive and rational issues, and the right brain handles emotional and feeling issues.
Children are born with a well-developed right brain, but it takes a certain amount of time to slowly build up their left brain abilities.
Therefore, in daily life, when facing a small child, we often cannot understand the real needs he wants to express because his left brain ability has not yet been fully developed.
But if we give a little child a pen and let him play freely, we will find that they are all masters of graphic thinking and intuitive abilities.
Therefore, by making good use of children’s right brain abilities, we can well discover children’s hidden talents.
Today, we bring a book about the psychology of painting: "Recognizing Childhood by Looking at Paintings: An Analysis of the Psychology of Children's Painting". The author Xu Jingru will lead everyone to discover children's hidden talents from their various paintings.
How can a child’s heart be read with just a painting?
The murals on ancient caves let us know about the daily life of primitive people such as hunting, sacrifice, and worship in ancient times. They printed what they saw with simple lines, symbols, and patterns. On the rock wall, this was the earliest way of expression for primitive people, and only later did they use words to speak.
When children first come to this world, just like these primitive people, they will draw freely whatever they see and think.
Before he could speak, he used this subconscious language to express to the people around him, and he would not lie in his paintings.
I remember that many years ago, TVB had a TV series about solving crimes. After seeing her mother being killed, a little girl became aphasic and autistic. When the child accidentally met the heroine who came to the countryside to relax. , under the guidance of the heroine, she began to be able to draw some simple pictures to express her unspeakable emotions. One day, the little girl showed the heroine downstairs a painting composed of only a few simple geometric figures through the fenced window. Through the interpretation of these pictures, the police finally solved the murder case.
If we can activate the right brain and use the limited intuitive thinking ability of adults, we can still interpret a large amount of information about the child's mental activities from the child's painting when he painted the painting.
When we want to tell our children something, we often struggle to speak, and they still stare at you with their eyes wide open, not knowing why. But if we use picture books, it will be easier for them to accept.
Even without us having to say anything, they understood the meaning of the painting and were fascinated by it.
For picture books that I am very interested in, I will continue to read them over and over again. Every time I read them, I will feel happy or sad as the pictures turn.
The ability to read pictures is innate to humans, especially children.
As adults grow up, their left-brain abilities are constantly being built up. With long-term use of reasoning, logic, analysis and other thinking, many people's abilities have gradually deteriorated.
Picasso once said, "Every time I see children scribbling on the street, on the asphalt, or on the wall, I stop. What they write is often surprising. , I can always learn something..."
Children's paintings are a true restoration of their inner world.
What kind of painting is suitable for interpreting a child’s heart?
Adults’ understanding of painting is that the purpose of painting is to learn a certain skill and must learn what to draw.
Coloring books that were very popular in the past few years, such as "Secret Garden", were bought by some parents, with the intention of letting their children color and match their own colors, but they found that their children were not interested in such books. , I simply can’t muster the enthusiasm to color it. I still scribble wherever I need to, and I still can't understand the master's painting at all.
Taking the children to a painting interest class, the teacher arranged designated themes for creation, copying and sketching. In the class, the children learned techniques, color matching, and the difference between distant and close views.
Whenever there is a small class art exhibition, we can select the one recognized by parents as the best from all the children's paintings at a glance. But the children around me chose another painting that looked a little different in color and composition and thought it was the best.
Where is the difference in beats causing the synchronization to fail?
Teacher Xu Jingru, the author of this book, tells us that children’s subconscious minds are very open, and free graffiti and painting every day is his most direct and candid barometer. Only such paintings can provide us with a lot of information. information.
Due to the fixed patterns on the finished books and the designated range and required techniques for painting learning in the classroom, children have to subconsciously abide by these rules and hide their own innermost feelings during the painting process. Real ideas, formatted works, almost uniform style, uniform tone.
The paintings drawn by children in kindergarten are basically shapeless. If you ask them to tell you what they drew, they will tell you excitedly and eloquently that it is a green river. There is an apple tree full of purple apples. Each apple will greet the family of birds on the tree every morning. When the mother bird and the father bird go out to find food for the birds very diligently, the tree is full of apples. They will chat with the birds in the nest. This tree is very lively, just like our classroom... They can weave the content of their paintings into a "complete" story that is completely illogical in the eyes of adults, but in the hands of adults On the paper, there were clearly only a curved line, a tree and two flying birds drawn.
By the way, do you still remember the "Du Fu is Busy" series that suddenly became popular on the Internet? The same Du Fu can be described by different children as a slam dunk master, a wizard flying on a broomstick, Captain America, or holding up his mobile phone to take selfies with scissor hands...
Chaos in class Doodling in textbooks may not seem like a good idea, but for children who are under great pressure to study, this is the most honest version of themselves when doodling.
Only paintings drawn in the space of free graffiti will give adults the opportunity to get closer to their inner world.
What stories do children’s paintings tell us?
Children all like to watch cartoons. Because they can find their own shadow in cartoons.
If children are asked to draw an animal that represents themselves, they will naturally draw gentle, well-behaved and smart little squirrels, little rabbits, puppies, brave bears, big bears, etc.
After the movie "Zootopia" was released, the little bunny Officer Judy and the evil-smiling Fox Nick quickly won a large number of cute fans. It turns out that the familiar cute rabbit can be so brave, and it turns out that the cunning fox in the fairy tale is also just and kind.
Children who like little rabbits and little foxes will naturally think of themselves and have a strong passion for this character, and the paintings they draw will also bring their latest understanding of little rabbits and little foxes. .
If a child wants to feel warm or protected in his heart, he will draw powerful superheroes such as Superman, Spider-Man, and Iron Man.
If a child is asked to draw his family members, the family member who draws the most carefully is often the one she is most familiar with and relies on in daily life, and the family member who is farthest from him should be the companion. Minimal "familiar stranger".
The small animals, characters, and storylines in the paintings are actually the children’s inner selves and the recent events around them.
From understanding to discovering talent
Talent is a growth characteristic that is already present before growth.
The talents of some children can be seen at a glance, while the talents of most children are still waiting for us to discover through daily life. Even some special children have their own growth characteristics.
At a certain stage, some children will draw the same content over and over again.
Some boys are obsessed with drawing dinosaurs, some girls are obsessed with painting Sailor Moon, and some children are obsessed with watching a certain cartoon.
At this time, they were immersed in it as if they were studying a subject. They looked at and studied things that aroused their interest over and over again. Today, the dinosaurs have turned into other colors, adding new colors to Sailor Moon. magic.
Adults cannot understand this kind of behavior of drawing for themselves, but they are a little worried about whether it will have an intellectual impact on the children?
In fact, we adults have overlooked one point. Such concentration on a certain thing may not be found in ourselves, and concentration is often an indispensable ability for children in their future studies. .
If we rudely interrupt him who is focused at this stage again and again, in the long run, maybe we will no longer be able to ask our children to concentrate in class.
Some children only need you to give them a large piece of paper, and they can quietly and continuously draw complex patterns on this large paper.
When he finishes drawing this piece of paper, roll it up and unfold it slowly. He can tell you the origin, process and result of the story in this painting by telling a story about each part of the picture.
Painting these complex patterns takes a long time, maybe several days, but he did not give up on the unfinished painting. Even if he was interrupted in the middle, he would quickly return to the unfinished painting. Continue their story in front of the scroll.
These children often have great patience and persistence, accompanied by strong narrative skills.
Some special children, such as Isha, an 8-year-old boy with dyslexia in "Stars on Earth", are problem children in the eyes of adults. They are stupid, weird, and slow. Tuntun, even his parents couldn't bear it and sent him to boarding school.
But Nick, the art teacher at the boarding school, read the child's inner world of creativity and wonder from Ishata's paintings. He told Ishaan’s parents that Ishaan is not a problem child, but “their thinking is very unique and often difficult for people to understand. Once their achievements are known to the world, everyone is shocked.”
These special children have different thinking than ordinary people. If they are well developed, they can even become cutting-edge talents in some fields.
American psychologist Ley once said: You cannot open the lock of the right brain with the key of the left brain.
In addition to spoken language, children can also use pictures, colors, and various symbols to express a variety of emotions. However, adults not only lack patience and eyes for discovery, but also always like to use their left Brain thinking to open up the child's right brain.
After reading this book, you will find that children’s paintings require us adults, who are busy with the boring trivial matters of life, to mobilize our right brains to decipher and listen to the children’s inner world.