We are all Born Artists.
The truth is that the ability and desire to draw, come just as natural to a child as its ability and desire to talk.
Figs. 217 and 218.—The Drawing-board.
That almost all children learn to talk with more or less fluency, while few learn to draw with any approach to skill, is because talking is encouraged and systematically taught from earliest infancy, while drawing is discouraged, and has been ever since the days of old Sakya-Muni, 400 years before the Christian era. Sakya, the narrow-minded old heathen, thought it detrimental to progress in virtue to waste one’s time with pencil or brush. And to-day, in the gray light of the dawn of the twentieth century, boys are often forbidden to draw and few are encouraged in the practice, so that, in fear of punishment, the youngsters give vent to their artistic feelings by slyly decorating the flags, walls, and fences.
Fig. 219.—A Chalk-Talker.
Art will never reach the proper standard until these little “chalk-talkers” are encouraged, and taught to handle their chalk with the same skill with which they are taught to use their tongues.