Le Corbusier, born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris was a French architect, interior designer, sculptor, and painter. He was one of the most important architects in the 20th century and a leading figure in functionalist architecture, known as the “father of functionalist”. He, together with Buckminster Fuller and Mies van Der Rohe were regarded as the main representative of the international school of formal architecture.
A showcase of sculptures made by children from Starry Arts School.
The greatest differences between man and other animals are intellectual intelligence but what are the specific differences in intellectual intelligence? One of the biggest differences is that human brains have very high levels of abstraction. This is a place where other animals and even our closest relatives, chimpanzees, are far behind. Think carefully, we usually learn basic knowledge through some kind of abstract summary which is the built upon to a higher level of abstraction. And a lot of what we teach the next generation is also part of these abstractions. Some people may not understand why abstract, or even where the abstract knowledge learned in childhood? Isn’t that all intuitive? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 isn’t it simple? It is because we have accumulated thousands of years of knowledge and culture that we despise the simplest “abstract” knowledge. If you think about the comparison between humans and animals, and the transition from primitive society to modern civilization, you will find that many of the very simple concepts in life are not concrete, but all abstract.
For example, when we eat a bowl of noodles, we can taste delicious or plain, sweet, sour, bitter and spicy flavours. Has it ever occurred to you that taste is an abstract concept? Who can visualise “delicious” or “sweet”? Of course no one can, because these are adjectives. The development of these adjectives from no language in human beings are certainly not immediate, because they are not concepts that can be laid out directly like objects, let alone words such as mood, momentum, and so on.
Wait, our question was: Can drawing and handcrafts help children grow? What is creativity? What is imagination? Why are we suddenly getting off-track?
What I am really saying is that if we understand a lot of the simplest knowledge, even the easiest concepts, it will help us think about other knowledge at a deeper level. Sometimes if a result is instilled directly, the thinking pattern is completely locked. If I have no chance to get in touch with the formation process of these concepts and knowledge since childhood but just blindly give the result, my imagination and creativity will be greatly limited. Among all ages, the stage of being a child is the most important stage for forming innovative thinking. That is why I don’t think children should be forced to do homework too early, why a simple finger count can take two years or more, and why very young children can’t learn to draw with stick figures and sketches… It is like if someone haven’t eaten noodles before to go to see the noodle recipes, even if they understand the words like if you tell them (A) very fresh (B) a little sour, if we never give this person to try, just let him remember the taste of (A) and (B) “flavours”, now give him a bowl of (C) flavour noodles that person will not get into the habit of using adjectives to try and describe flavour (C). In addition to giving answers that you have already told (A) and (B), that person has lost all imagination and creativity in the matter.
Now, I will try to describe the process of abstraction through mathematics and painting as examples in hopes to help parents get rid of misunderstandings about creativity and imagination and clear up any doubts.
The figure above is a collection of numbers from various civilizations, meaning ancient civilizations worldwide have simultaneously found ways to abstract the concept of numbers into symbols. Although these abstract language symbols look different, they represent the same abstract process. In fact, summarizing rules is an abstract process, which evolves into a large variety of abstract systems such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and other subjects through continuous inheritance and development. When we ask children to count their fingers, it is a way to familiarize them with these numerical rules. Not only the fingers, but all kinds of objects in life allow children to feel and observe these rules. We adults have long adapted to this pattern, and most of us are wired. But children have just started, so they have a strong intellectual curiosity to understand how these laws work, like what is 1, what is 2? Adults are used to walking around with these results, so they think 1 is 1 and 2 is 2, which is not surprising as you can just remember.
After hundreds or thousands of years of human civilization summing up their respective language symbols representing quantitative relations, namely numbers, and discovering many natural laws to add many formulas and definitions to numbers and their relations, becoming today’s huge system that can be applied to all walks of life. The original creation of models of these laws had clear practical implications, such as the possible initial use of these numerical definitions to establish rules of trade and money, which was probably the earliest mathematical application. The first external objects that humans took advantage of were stones, shells, small sticks, beans, and even the tails and horns of animals that could be seen everywhere in nature. For example, stones were used to indicate how many preys were raised. Today, if a chicken is traded for 5 fish. When recording, 1 stone is taken from the stone representing chicken and 5 stones representing fish are put into the stone representing fish. Tomorrow, if 3 fish is traded for a duck. In the same way, 3 stones representing fish are taken out and 1 stone representing duck is placed in the frame of the duck, so that people do not have to keep track of how many preys are left. A wise man would use the colour and shapes of the stones to define and collect them for his own counting tool. At the same time, he would see easily how much wealth he had and what he needed to do to work hard to survive in that era. However, objects were often wrong or lost so people invented stone inscriptions to count them.
I wonder if anyone ever notices how a young child will love playing with his/her toys and anything he/she can reach within a hand’s distance until one day they become interested in useful objects like pen and paper so they begin to paint and draw various things. When you look at their work, you probably will find it hard to understand their abstract imagination.
Emily Xie (6)’s sketch and original painting of a happy little girl bringing flowers and Moutain City.
Emily Xie’s mum asked me “What is this painting?” I told her that this is her inner self, an omnipotent spirit between heaven and earth.
Let’s go back to the topic of counting fingers in the first grade of primary school. If the ancients used fingers to count and calculate, a significant disadvantage would be that the calculations cannot be stored. In ancient times, if a hunter wanted to count how many wild animals he had killed in a month, he would add them up day by day. He could not go to bed with counting his fingers every day. Therefore, stones were probably the most common counting tool in the earlier days, when there was no money (which is why many places used decimal or pentadecimal). When children learn to count with their fingers, they are restarting the process. It’s a process that helps them to modify from the figurative to abstract, and over time will teach them the Arabic numeral “3” represents three fingers.
Below is a six-year-old student from Starry Arts named Jennifer with some tools -using candy to solve math problem, she learned the rules and then began to realize the calculation process. This process is not the traditional addition of numbers together, it utilises candy and chocolate as different units. First, we explain to her the numerical relation of the small piece of pink candy as a unit (ones), chocolate (tens), lollipop (hundreds). Refer to image below.
Have a look at how this 6-year-old child experience the process of 42+73=?
Recently, a high school student’s question became very popular online
Check out the video made by Starry Arts Steam Online. Try it out for yourself and you might get a hint of the abstractions inside. This time, the seeds are symbolic of unit (ones) and candy (tens).
All right, so you’ve read up to here, do you think I talked off-topic again? The point of all of this is to show you how we let children go back to the way our ancestors invented the simplest arithmetic. This is an experimental process and an abstract process. Why is it abstract? Our ancestors abstracted the concept of “number” from two prey, one fruit, two fruit or some kind of object. Then, we invented the basic system. Note that if the concept of numbers had never been abstracted, the basic would have been impossible. Then, after a series of abstractions, it was only natural to devise simple addition and subtraction. Don’t underestimate the fact that it seems so natural to modern people. Back in ancient times, it was one of the greatest inventions of some tribes. This simplifies the tribesmen’s calculations of how many people there are in 42 and 73 combined by an unknown number of times!
On the other hand, as you have just observed, although different civilizations abstract the concept of “numbers” with their completely different symbols. In mathematics, these systems of symbols can be compared to a certain degree of good (brevity), and we now know that the temporary winners are Arabic numerals (from India). But in the art world, we know that a lot of times there is no absolute standard.
So, let us go back and see how this relates to where we started? The first thing to realize is that one of the most important ways for humans to understand the world is to abstract a model of the world in our brain based on the information we get from our senses. This model is simplified and without communication, is understood by everyone differently. You can focus on a thing at a completely different point than what I am focusing on when looking at the same thing. And sometimes the model does not even have a concrete image. For example, our expressions of kinship, friendship and family are also abstract models.
Now let us take an example from art. Below are 40 pictures of Sydney Opera House painted on the scroll by children, with different shapes and colours. The lines summarized by them from their own observation provide them with their favourite colours, thus creating this colourful world. Each Opera House painting is very different from the real Sydney Opera House because the features of the painting have been abstracted using their imagination.
Children learn painting, not only to learn a skill but more importantly they are practicing the ability to abstract their thinking process. What we need is for them to keep practising this thinking process, to find different possibilities in the process, and finally get to one that is most suitable and favoured by them. Therefore, they will make various attempts and encounter various problems in the process of painting, but their teachers will give them guidance and various possible solutions when they have encountered problems. In this process, they not only practice painting as a skill, but also gradually form a habit of thinking, which will become the most basic ability to determine the success of a person’s life. Therefore, learning skills cannot be rushed. How to observe and how to think is extremely important for children. Mastering the ability of effective thinking opens the door of wisdom. In art, painting is also the most intuitive exercise for children to practise abstract, to clarify their own ideas and summarise the relationship between things.
As a teacher for many years, I have become familiar with students to a certain extent. In fact, I can see that every painting has some unique “personality” of each individual student. In the process of painting, they to a certain extent, restored the Sydney Opera House abstracted in their mind with their own way of thinking on the scroll. At the children’s stage, I believe that it is necessary for them to go through with the thinking process of summarizing abstract things mentioned above and constantly make use of how they got to this thinking process. In today’s education system, the desire to see good grades immediately is sometimes a great burden for parents. However, teachers also know how the importance on cultivating a child’s thinking ability first as with this ability they can solve problems and walk out their own path. But the initial stages of developing a way of thinking are often questioned because there is no rapid and significant improvement in skills. In an age of high competition, it’s important to have teachers who are open-minded and parents who understand. I do not know how many parents and teachers feel anxious and unease when hearing the Chinese idiom, “you can’t lose at the starting line.”
Painting and craftwork are perhaps the simplest forms of communication to express and convey feelings in any art discipline. Children use this way to think and communicate with the outside world. At the beginning, it is also a long process of practice. Through practicing the coordination of hand and brain, I also believe the child’s problem-solving ability will improve. Why do I think that? Manual work is more intuitive and easier to operate than drawing. Under the guidance of teachers, children know that to make an animal or object, they should first know its structure and then develop the details from its structure, which is a more intuitive abstract process. Therefore, when a child learns the way of making small animals, he or she will know from where to start before making other animals or creating other monsters. This is the same process for painting a landscape. First, he or she should draw the horizon line for separating the land and sky. It is easy for children to make more abstract conclusions with their feelings and thoughts, such as the ups and downs of a mountain. For example, a car has four wheels but what kind of car is less important to them. The more important thing is that they first abstract out that the car can run and needs wheels. As for the appearance, it is not that they don’t want to copy a real car, but more so because they don’t know why the car is designed into such a way. This proves that the children creating a lot of random models such as a car, may in the future really have such a car, so it is a fundamental abstract out of the car’s function, characteristics and the most important part of the car drawn out. The teacher can help them solve the problem.
As a result of care, worry and comparison, parents will inadvertently pass on their emotions to their children. But although children are a blank piece of paper, they can feel what you desire and hope for them. When they are still young and have no way to make progress quickly, they will unconsciously pursue the wishes of parents rather than the aspiration of themselves. Children tend to follow their own heart although they may get criticism and blame for doing so. Some parents may even compare their children to other children, which may negatively impact their self-esteem and belief in self’s abilities. I once had a talk with one of my 13-year-old student, and she told me about why she liked to play games. She said that in the game world you can make mistakes repeatedly and no one will know, so you always have a chance to become the best in the games. Whereas, in reality there exists parents who urgently wishes for their child’s success and may not have enough patience to wait for them to learn from failure. Consequently, they may hurt their child’s emotions verbally at times when they need comfort and encouragement. Therefore, some children will rather choose to hide in a game world and feel the payoff from repeated trying, failing, and making it to the next level….
Ultimately, we all want our children to have the value of not wasting time, growing knowledge, being imaginative, creative, and becoming successful in the future. As we all know, imagination and creativity are very difficult to “learn” when you grow up, because it is not a kind of knowledge, but a kind of mode of thinking and habit. Once people get used this mode of thinking, it is difficult to change when they grow up. And a lot of basic thinking patterns and habits of thinking are formed in childhood. We say that art is the art of everyone. In the process of learning painting, there is no absolute standard answer in the process of pursuing many possibilities. That is why children’s works are different from each other. Hence, you will often find that children’s drawings of animals or characters are always like themselves it is because their works are interesting so they would want to look again at it again. We call this feeling childlike. In other words, when adults try to copy the paintings of masters, it is very amazing. But when parents try to copy their child’s works that will be rather difficult. Many masters spend their lives trying to clear their minds, to learn how children think and how children draw.
Although I haven’t done the exact experiment of asking parents to learn their child’s painting. I have made several experiments asking parents to copy famous artworks. I can clarify that all parents have no previous foundation in painting and have copied the works by masters within a few classes. The pictures below show proof.
Here are some parents’ impressionist work, inspired by Monet and Van Gogh. After framing, isn’t it beautiful? All parents had no previous knowledge in painting.
Picasso once said: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
What does this mean? Picasso is not saying that children’s drawings are hard to learn. But rather he is saying it is hard to clear our minds of what we take for granted.
The following two groups are works from Starry Arts Steam Online. Our teachers told children stories about floating cities asked children to draw their idea of a floating city or imaginary corner. Have a look at their creations and you will find that each work is unique and expresses completely different ideas of floating cities.
Today’s children have the potential to change the world, but they are constantly hampered by stereotypes. Why?
Children are like jade or a blank sheet of paper. If we prematurely teach them directly and not let them experience their own feelings and the process of creating their own conclusions (thinking), it is what we call the overexploitation and limit of their thoughts.
Just like the maths example we talked about earlier, it can be watermelon instead of sunflower seeds or anything you can think of practically applied in our lives but they are abstracted into defined numbers, the results will be the same. Now, will you consider not letting your child memorize the rules and symbols made by our predecessors? Should you give your child more space to think and experience? And when your child understands the relationship between the most basic and abstract things, you let them know the predecessors have summed up perhaps more convenient “mathematics” to help their understanding become more profound?
Similarly, if we applied this to art, we’ve already mentioned that there’s no standard answer to art. Today, visual arts have passed the stage where we only need to draw the image. As we have mentioned in some of our previous articles, since impressionism, western art has had more avenues to explore and with more emphasises on other aspects of expression rather than a thousand times consistent restoration of realistic images. Children are in a stage where they are using their observation, thinking, own experiences and interest to sum up their own feelings. If we give them a picture of a famous painting or artwork and tell them to copy it exactly, it won’t broaden their horizon but rather limit their creative mindset. What is the difference in the long run between asking them to practice copying a painting and the practice of writing a defined Arabic numbers over and over again? You ask them to copy repeatedly and then they can reapply their memory to do the same things again? Some kids may pass tests and get good grades based on their memory, but are they really interested in continuing the subject for future studies? Like in the domestic sketch exam in China they try to achieve that realistic accuracy to pass, but what is the purpose of learning such habits? For good grades? What is painting for? To be realistic? To catch up with the machine? What is the meaning of art? Once you lose the ability to think, how can creativity and imagination emerge? Since adults can copy master’s work successfully with no previous painting knowledge, doesn’t it show copying artworks is not hard? The hard part is the development of an individual’s thought process from nothing to something.
So parents ask me what is creativity? What is imagination? I believe that is something children develop in their process of thinking. When a baby sees a butterfly, he/she will find his/her own way to express it. This process of thinking is valuable. More than 4000 words have been written in this article. Thank you very much if you have read up to here. Below are some interesting collection of children’s work with adult’ works. If you are not tired from reading, you can have a look at these interesting artworks.
Which are the masterpieces in the picture below? Select one of the world’s greatest masters from among the works below. So far, no parent has guessed correctly. This is a multiple-choice question. To find out the correct answer, you can do a quick YouTube search for Starry Arts Steam Online we have made a short video there showing you the exact images.
Below is a picture sent to me by a parent. On the left are some sketches done by seven-year-old, Lavina, and on the right is a sketch copying practice done by her father when he was a child. Perhaps you will soon find that her father is really good at sketching. However, people may be more interested to look at the works of Lavinia for a while because they are more interesting details and imagination in the character’s expressions. This is the power of a child’s creative thinking.
I have published a question to ask parents and children before using the following series of pictures. The question was how many different people completed the works picture below, and the answer is also very interesting…
This is a conversation I had with one of the parents, who thought 145 was a person’s work and 236789 was another person’s work
236789 are Vincent Van Gogh’s sketches, 145 are done by three different college students for their entrance examination. 145 are three people’s work, and 236789 are Van Gogh’s study. This parent guessed all of them right. How did she/he do it? Because you can see immediately the characteristics of each persona’s abstract expressions, different line weights and brushwork. So once again, imagination and creativity are the process of expressing your own feelings and creating your own conclusions.
These children started with creating simple emojis. Below are handmade emoji and gifts created by children in Starry Arts School. If you like to see more? These children’s’ handmade WeChat gifs are free (you can also pay a tip if you like) and the App is to raise money for the children’s art exhibition (App is at the bottom left).
Many people think that since previous knowledge has been summarized, we just need to learn the results directly. However, if a person has never been familiar with any process of summary and abstract thinking, even if he/she learns knowledge in the future, he/she is likely to stay at the previous stage. In everyone’s life, it is the most critical and the most simple thing to get in touch with this thinking process when you are a child, and most of the time it determines a person’s thinking habits for a lifetime. We call people who have photographic memory, geniuses and such geniuses are not uncommon, but why is there only one Einstein in a century? In addition to the opportunities afforded by time, let’s not forget that Einstein revisited many of the fundamental underlayers of physics (relativity, absolute time, absolute space) to invent/discover relativity, so thinking is the true foundation of any discipline.
Hyperrealism in painting can be understood as precise colouring in accordance with set rules, without any characteristics or self-created rules. With the gaming is the same principle, once you reached the end, there is no higher levels to beat…
As we have mentioned earlier in STEAM online theory class, realist painting reached its peak before the birth of Impressionism in the 19th century. With the Industrial Revolution, there were revolutions in the history of art. For details, you can read previous articles written by me and other articles on our “I am the Star Artist” service account, as well as our fortnightly ZOOM + YouTube livestream to chat with children about science, history and art. Please pay attention to our public WeChat account to attend livestream consultation on time. YouTube Channel video, YouTube Search Starry Arts or Scan Our YouTube QR code:
Starry Arts Steam Online’s series of open classes aims to provide children and parents with a stories, thoughts and innovations of those who have done so much to provide for our human society in history. I hope this can give parents and children a platform to know the world, understand human history and let us follow the path of our predecessors- thinking, looking for your key to open the door of wisdom.
Finally, I would like to conclude this article with an ancient saying: “If you give a hungry man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime”
Digression: Find the artworks of the masters in the artwork collation done by the students from Starry Arts School below. (The way to understand art is either by the masters or by children!).
STARRY ARTS STEAM ONLINE subscribe to our YouTube channel or search for STARRY ARTS STEAM ONLINE
Organised by STARRY ARTS SCHOOL, the Sydney Opera House, Townhall and Darling Harbour exhibitions for children…
We featured twice on the cover of NSW Regional Government’s monthly magazine (Burwood & Inner West)
The Mayor of Burwood promoted us on Facebook
NSW state legislators, secretaries of education, immigration, and finance signed the children’s picture books
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has signed a collection of children’s paintings
Our student works have won various awards
Starry Arts School’s Astronaut Crystal Trophy Starry-Arts has been awarded an international design patent and will be awarded to the kids with the most interactive online class participation at the Sydney Opera House Exhibition in 2021.
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