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'Draw with your children every day'
Chris Riddell, the new Children's Laureate, says drawing with your children is as important as reading with them
Parents should draw with their children every day, and make it as important an activity as reading a bedtime story, the new Children’s Laureate has said.
Chris Riddell, an award-winning illustrator who inherits the post from Malorie Blackman, said parents too often use the excuse that they can’t draw.
“I hear this all the time,” Riddell said. “And I ask, ‘Do you have hands? Can you hold a pencil? Can you make a mark with that pencil on that piece of paper? Then guess what? You’re drawing. Now all you have to choose is what to draw.’
“That is the great struggle for some people. When they say, ‘I can’t draw,’ what they mean is, ‘I don’t know what to draw.’”
But just as parents are encouraged to read a story to their children every night, so they should draw with them every day.
“A toddler with a crayon is a wonderful thing. Five or six is a great age to be drawing. It’s that notion of not worrying about what you’re drawing, but just engaging in the act of drawing,” said Riddell, whose books include the Goth Girl series and Ottoline and the Yellow Cat.
An autobiographical illustration by Chris Riddell
“Drawing for fun is something that children understand instinctively. But as well as being fun, it’s a learning tool. You learn to use your imagination. You learn to think visually. You learn what words look like when you draw them. It’s amassing all sorts of skills.
“What I used to do with my children when they were young was to sit down together, and they would draw in my sketchbook and I would draw in theirs, and then we would finish each other’s drawings,” said the father-of-three, who is also a political cartoonist for The Literary Review and The Observer.
“I’m often asked by children if I have any advice about how to become an illustrator, a designer or an artist. I tell them to go out and buy a sketchbook and fill it up with pictures. Don’t worry about what you’re putting in that sketchbook – just draw.”