The Drawing Lesson
By Pat Boyd, Executive Director, South Dakotans for the Arts
 

A long time ago, and far away, I was in the fourth grade. It was Art Day in the first week of school. Our Art Teacher arrived at the classroom door, pushing his supply cart and hauling an easel, a nice man with a big smile. Looking sideways at the clock, he told us we didn’t have much time together and we had to create a forest. He set up the easel. Miss Collier handed out sheets of drawing paper. We opened our new crayon boxes.

He told us to get up and go to our second floor windows and study the big elm trees lining the street.  “Look very hard at the trees. Concentrate.  Now pick just one to look at. Concentrate.  Pick out your tree.”  So excited to be allowed out of our desks, we forgot the assignment before we got to the windows. “Look at your tree!  Concentrate!  Examine!  Good! Now back to your desks.” Miss Collier reminded us to write our names in the bottom right hand corner of our papers.

We all drew trees. Everyone finished in about three minutes and looked up. The Art Teacher’s smile had turned down as he walked around the room. This was disappointing. Most of us were proud of our creations, almost identical to one another, a big scalloped green balloon atop a brown rectangle that ended at a jagged green line across the bottom. It was a cloudy day, but most were lit by a yellow spoked circle stuck into an upper corner. Some trees wore red dots, suggesting apples or cherries growing on the elms. I tried to conjure a brown squirrel in the grass above my name, but it looked more like something else.

The Art Teacher told us to turn our papers over. A boy raised his hand, asking for another sheet, having already used both sides. The teacher assured him his first attempt was better than his second, and held it up for us to see. The boy’s face went red, but eased when the teacher used him and his drawing as an example of someone who had actually looked at a tree. A few lines ran the length of the page, spreading out at top and bottom.  “Finish this one. It is fine. The rest of you, go quietly back to the windows and look. Concentrate. The forest must be up before the bell rings.” He made it sound like the most important task we would ever undertake.

“Look this time,” he instructed, “Think about what you see. Return to your seat when you are ready, and direct your attention to the easel.”  We sat, and he began to draw slowly and easily, talking as he worked. He talked about the purposes of roots, bark, branches and stems, about light between the branches and air moving through the leaves. He talked about the strong trunk and the delicate stems-- patterns, how the wind must blow mostly from one direction, because there were more leaves left on one side of the tree. A branch was missing, and had left a hole in the trunk. He drew and talked. We listened. Too soon, he finished and removed his drawing from our view. “You have twelve minutes. Concentrate. Let your tree tell its story. When you have finished, bring me your drawing and we will plant it in the forest.”

When the bell rang, we forgot to rush. Twenty-nine trees lined the upper bulletin boards around the room, every one as different as the child who drew it, not one cartoon tree.  He smiled again, and we were proud of our forest, of ourselves.

 I still draw my tree when I need to sort things out. So many lessons later, this remains the most formative, the most helpful. I do not make my living drawing trees—well, not exactly. That was not my Art Teacher’s intention. He was an everyday Wizard, completing the connection between eye and brain, perception and cognition, attention and excitement, at just the right time. Twenty-nine children learned to navigate better in their new world that afternoon.

Please make time for the arts in every learning day a priority, and keep the Wizards coming – It will take some serious concentration and navigation to get us through these woods.

"When we teach a child to sing or play an instrument, we teach her to listen. When we teach a child to draw, we teach her to see. When we teach a child to dance, we teach them about body and space. When we teach a child about the folk and traditional arts and great masterpieces, we teach them to celebrate their roots and find their place in history." – Jane Alexander