Losing Control to Remove Expectations Part 1: The Magic of Drawing with Cardboard
My grandmother devoted her entire life to teaching art. She taught adults, elementary, and high school. There’s a technique she lives by. A technique that’s wildly successful with any age. Now, what does ‘successful’ mean to an art teacher? Does it mean that your students all create masterpieces or master a skill? I’d say no. To me, a successful project is one where students are engaged, excited, and free. It’s one where students aren’t so worried about their final products, feel safe to experiment, and are completely immersed in the process. The funny thing about these types of projects is that students usually DO end up feeling as though they’ve created masterpieces and are extremely proud of what they’ve created….and here’s why.
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The technique my grandmother lives by is "‘drawing with cardboard’. Grab an old box and chop the cardboard into roughly 1” x 2” rectangles. Some can be a little skinnier or wider. You can either work on black paper with white paint, or white paper with black paint. Pour some paint (tempera or acrylic) onto a flat surface like an old plastic plate. Dip the thinner edge of the cardboard into the paint. Before you set out to create a representational drawing, EXPERIMENT….see what different effects you can get with a piece of cardboard. What you'll discover is the possibilities are endless. You can use the edges like a stamp, you can drag it and the corrugated edge will create beautiful marks, you can twist it to make little circles, you can use the corners to make small marks or dots. Aha! At this point students are ALREADY PROUD because they’ve INVENTED their own techniques.
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Now set out to draw! Find an interesting plant, tree, or chair. Look in a mirror, or at a family member. Look through a window and try to capture the window and what’s beyond it. I’ve developed my own version of this technique using a book introduced to me by my grandmother called Birds Without Words by Giovannetti. This book is wonderful and filled with amazingly imperfect, big personality, bird illustrations. Some are messy, some are angry, some are silly, some are sad. But these birds all have energy. And when you lose the control and precision you normally have when drawing with a pen, pencil, or paintbrush, your work suddenly has energy. The illustrations in this particular book are very inspiring to children because their simplicity makes children feel like, “Hey, I could do that!” And they can. It’s endlessly fun to flip through the pages in this book, laugh, and come up with your own bird characters.
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You see, IT’S THE LOSS OF CONTROL THAT ALLOWS US TO FORGIVE OUR IMPERFECTIONS. “I couldn’t possibly capture all the details or texture with a piece of cardboard.” or, “Of course my work won’t look like the real thing, I’m drawing with a flat edge.” Once we’ve forgiven ourselves we can allow ourselves to feel proud, to let go and see what happens. And it’s this work, in my opinion, that is powerful and a true reflection of ourselves.
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Soooooo….next time you get a package, which let’s be honest, in this day in age will probably be sometime in the next week, save the box and chop it up. Experiment and draw with your child. The discoveries will be successful every time, no matter what you use as inspiration for your drawing.