Drawing Layers: Butterflies and Flowers

One difficult concept for children in learning to draw is to mentally transform 3-D objects into two-dimensional ones. 
Betty Edwards talks about visually "flattening out the layers" in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.  She has the reader use a transparency to hold up to an object and then trace said object with a non-permanent marker in order to see the flattening process. While very useful advice for an adult or older child, I find this to be a bit too complex for younger children.


Instead, the advice from Mona Brookes in Drawing with Children has proved most helpful to me in teaching my own children what to do. Her advice is to teach children to always draw what is "in front" first and then to draw the things in the background next. After drawing the object in front, you "skip over" it with your pencil to draw the object in the background, continuing with your line until it is finished. 


To practice this concept, I chose one of my daughter's favorite subjects: flowers and butterflies. I often use graphics from the internet and found this graphic (actually a crochet pattern) of a butterfly, bee and ladybug in front of a flower. We first drew the butterfly, ladybug and bee. Then, I showed her how draw the flower and "skip over" the parts of the flower hidden by the bugs. Her finishing touch was to add a house and people. It was a pretty exhausting process for her, but if you compare her drawing above to the original, it's impressive for a 6-year-old. 

Linked to The Magic Onions