I got her to sit beside me and shared the secret of acing art lessons with her.
Art is subjective. Technically, no one should or can comment on whether others' artwork is nice or even give a score. How to? When Picasso embarked on his new style of drawing, the one which humans were not drawn realistically and sometimes even disproportionately (like one eye lower then the other eye), it wasn't accepted by people at that time. Now his paintings are selling for millions! And, do we have real artists in our education system to teach art lessons? No! Not sure if they received any formal art training at all...
Question is, how then can an art teacher tell if a student's artwork is good? My answer: effort.
I remember during one art lesson in secondary school, I was told to do paper cutting. I thought to myself, what an easy assignment for the week! I took the little square piece of paper and cut some geometric shapes in it. It was so simple that I even did another piece as a bonus for my teacher. To my horror, my teacher showed my paper-cutting to the class as a negative example. The other classmate's paper cutting had many more incisions, many small and delicate ones that almost fill up the entire piece of paper. Clearly, my classmate was perceived as spending more effort, not that his paper cutting was all that pretty.
So my advice to Girl: You have a great drawing, now fill up the entire drawing block with colors. Leave no space untouched. Add some blending. You will be fine. Even if trees are not green, skies are not blue, that's fine as well.
photo credit: Zellaby via photopin cc
