Interesting Facts about Children and Illustration

When we were young, we usually get attracted to nice cartoon drawings, pictures of superheroes, cute drawings of animals and the likes. Have you wondered why children are drawn to illustrations and like to illustrate and doodle?

Here are some facts about kids and illustration:

Illustrating characters involves a great deal of thinking.

When coming up with a character, a great deal of thinking has to be done. How does the character look like? What is the personality traits for the character? How does the character dress up like and why? These are some questions that a child would have to answer in his head before creating a character. As such, when children learn how to illustrate, there is a great deal of learning points and they will have a list of things to consider. Thus, learning the art of illustration can make a child a better thinker!

Illustrations help children visualise better.

As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, when kids have not developed the ability to speak and read well enough, pictures and illustrations act as the best form of visualising their thoughts and ideas. Hence, when children learn illustration, they get the opportunity to hone their visualisation skills and can learn how to convey their ideas and thoughts better, making them more effective communicators.

Illustrations help make written text more accessible to children.

Hug by Jimmy Liao

When children read books, they tend to look at the illustrations first. In a book, the illustrations and text work closely to create meanings. Hence, when a child reads a book by looking at the illustration that accompanies the text, time spent on looking at illustrations can contribute to a child’s ability to read for meaning, expressing ideas and responding to the texts they encounter.

Illustrations help children learn to be more creative!

When children learn how to illustrate, they get the opportunity to explore different materials and have fun exploring different styles. Coming up with different characters and their narratives and tweaking them to create various stories forces children to think out of the box. Illustration involves tapping on the creative side of a child’s mind, to imagine things that may or may not occur in reality, and translate them into visual images. Hence, when a child illustrates, creativity is encouraged.

Character Conceptualization Art Camp

Details and purchase link here!!

Ideas adapted from this site:

CLPE: https://clpe.org.uk/powerofpictures/creative-approaches/1