Shoes?

My son and daughter came home all torqued up about something today, and it amuses me.

Apparently there was a New Art Teacher today. "Nat" apparently does not have much experience with the elementary school set. She gave them the assignment to draw... a shoe.

:::frown, tilting head to side:::: A shoe, kids? Yes.

Now, I'm sure you could tell a college class "Draw your shoe" and they would all be inspired to go off in their own directions to produce creative, detailed pieces, some of which actuallyCOULD be called "art", perhaps even by Mr. C who really only likes the scenery-type pieces.

But listen, Nat. We are talking about age ten and under here. They need to be a little bit more grounded, and not the way that a shoe is, either.

My daughter pulled forth from her backpack a sadly wrinkled piece of paper. In the lower left corner is a blob of black chalk that vaguely resembles the shoes she wears with her school uniform. There was no detail, because those pieces of chalk are pretty clunky. So, not only did Nat give a really R-A-N-D-O-M assignment, she really didn't give them the right tools.

Hmm, kind of sounds like my office.... nevermind.

I looked at the picture, and looked at my daughter. She looked disgusted with the work. Even though I was just this week accused of being able to put on an Emmy-worthy act (by ex- Friend recently mentioned...) I knew that no amount of talent would make her believe that I thought this was an awesome piece.

So I took a different approach. I reminded her that sometimes things don't come out the way we want them to. It doesn't necessarily mean that we should give up art. (Though perhaps Nat needs a new career. I'll wait to see what next week brings.) I told her that if I was her teacher, I would want her to think about what she could have done differently in the picture and maybe what type of tools would have been better - like clay or at least a pencil or fine point marker. And that sometimes you have to re-do or redesign something in order for it to come out to be something you like.

I don't want her to inherit a particular trait of mine that I wish I didn't have. If I try something and don't do well at it pretty much right away, I dump it for something else. I don't like to fail at things and I don't tend to dig in and sweat a little in the attempt to master something I find difficult.

Art can be fun and too many people think "I have no artistic talent" when really they could if they found the right media to play with. Perhaps I should find something I'd like to do, but I'm not really very good at, and take a few lessons. Any suggestions?

I guess that's the question for today - is there anything you'd like to learn to do, either as a hobby or a profession, that you're currently not really very good at?

I'll ponder that and get back to you. Or perhaps it will be my little secret. Fear of failure, you know.

At any rate - she threw out the picture. It was a shoe, for crying out loud.