How to foster an environment that encourage your children to be artistic and creative:

I have a regular segment on radio here in Seoul. TBS efm on Real Mom Real Talk. Recently I talked about how to encourage kids to be creative. I realised this was something I could make a video about.

Also many of you would have seen my videos here where my toddler paints something and I finish the painting, so it’s a nice painting collaboration together.

I am an artist, so I encourage my child to paint and draw. My parents are not traditional artists though, but they raised my siblings and I in a very creative home. They are creative in other ways.

I realised after doing the radio segment that many parents do want to encourage creativity but don’t know how. So I thought I could do a video with some real strategies for parents, even if the parent doesn’t feel like they are creative themselves. I want to stress that it’s never to late to learn how to be creative and giving your kids the right environment will allow them to develop life long skills.

So firstly, creativity is really important! Encouraging your child to draw and paint doesn’t mean that they have to be an artist later in life, but these skills can be transferred to many lines of work. Helping them be creative is a good base to help them later in life. But also, regardless of thoughts of worry about what jobs your kid will have later, being creative in itself is stress relieving: so many kids are stressed out these days so proving a good environment for creativity is going to help.

I think many parents feel overwhelmed about how to provide the best creative environment for their kids.

Many parents try once a week, they get some paints out, or get some arts and crafts stuff out hoping it’s going to be a great lovely experience for their kids. The kids mix all the paints together, make a big brown mess and spill over the water. Or they get frustrated with the craft activity and it all becomes a stressful event for everyone.

Also many parents are stressed about the mess that comes with art and that stress is projected onto the kids.

I do have some real tips about this.

• Kids should have access to some art supplies at all times. I don’t mean access to paints all the time if they are young. Just at least crayons, and as they get older allow them access to paints at all time. And just crayons or pencils from a very young age. My son is almost two and at any time he can draw while at home. I know parents worry about them drawing on walls and furniture, I try to limit this by having so many big sketchbooks for him to draw in. Art should be part of life, not just a thing you do once every few weeks.

• When doing something like painting. Don’t be stressed about the mess. Hovering over them cleaning up every spill is giving them the idea that they are doing something wrong. It is also devaluing art. Just try to prepare for mess, put down plastic or newspaper, have them wear old clothes. Don’t freak out about mess.

• Don’t buy the cheapest art supplies when you can afford better ones. This is a mistake I have seen many many times. Now, I don’t mean parents who are in a very difficult financial situation and can only afford that. I mean parents who clearly spend money on other things like expensive toys, but when it comes to art they will only spend a few dollars on the worst type of watercolour paints. You’ve probably seen the one: there is so little paint, it’s so low quality and comes with one terrible brush. The child will paint for a bit, but it’s so hard to use and get discouraged. The other big problem is the message it’s giving to the child. The message is: art is not something important. And: “We as a family don’t spend money on this”. That is not encouraging to a child at all… yes they have the latest expensive toy, but it’s not worth paying a little bit more for some nice art supplies? It doesn’t mean you should buy professional level paints for a kid (you can if you want), but there is a lot of middle ground of reasonably priced art supplies. More than just one brush please!

• How to stop your child from making a big brown mess? It’s good for this to happen at least once. Kids think, “If I mix all these colours together I will make the best colour ever! Oops it’s brown”. But to really encourage them to make amazing artwork I do have some suggestions. For young kids, put out colours that work well together. Just a few, so even if they are all mixed together it won’t just be brown. The other thing is so switch the paper or canvases regularly. I think a lot of the time kids keep painting because they aren’t given new paper, they want to keep painting but it just turns all brown as they overwork the picture.

• Tell them how wonderful their artwork is! Display it proudly. Maybe even do a collab painting together. The paintings I have with my son is something really cool and it’s a record of our creativity. It doesn’t mean you should keep every single artwork your kid does forever if you don’t want to, but display them for long periods of time.

• Encourage other activities besides just drawing and painting. Rather than a bought structured art kit for an activity. Have a bunch of material so they can create whatever they want. We want to encourage unstructured play. Growing up we had what was called “the useful box” which was an idea we took from the kids tv show Playschool. Have a box with a lid where you have a combination of bought art supplies and then recycled containers and odds and ends. Things like construction paper, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, but also boxes and ribbons and paper that would otherwise be thrown out. Also provide scissors and glue. Allow them to use a hot glue gun as soon as they are old enough.

• I have heard some concerns from parents about how their child loved drawing but then other kids in school were better than them at drawing. It became a competition and they felt bad about their drawings and just gave it up. This happens a lot because some kids are just naturally gifted at drawing and can be miles ahead of other kids their age. Don’t let your child give up. Talk to them about how sometimes we have to try really hard at something and keep practicing before we get better. Kids tend to focus on just drawing because that’s what is available to them: paper and pencils. By giving your kid paints and other crafty materials they may find that they can paint awesome paintings or make something amazing out of cardboard. There are lots of people who can draw very meticulously but have trouble putting colour onto a canvas. Don’t let your child feel discouraged. Also take them to art galleries where they can see all kinds of different art.

• Understand that in order to have a creative environment things do need to get a bit messy. We live in a small apartment in Seoul and things get really really messy. But it’s worth it when I see how much my son loves drawing and painting.

Digital Art?

I also talk about digital art and kids in this video so watch to see my opinions on that. Also check out the toddler painting collab videos on our YouTube channel here.