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Children’s Lockdown Drawing Habits Revealed

Children’s Lockdown Drawing Habits Revealed

Is It A Bird Or Is It A Plane? Children’s Lockdown Drawing Habits Revealed

From building snowmen to helping solve tricky maths problems, many parents have been kept busy while homeschooling since the turn of the year.

While finding activities to keep children engaged can be tricky, drawing is a great way for kids to develop a number of fundamental skills while having a bit of fun at the same time.

In a bid to encourage more children to channel their creativity and to help parents in their homeschooling efforts, we have teamed up with artist Dan Pearce to provide expert tips on how to create the perfect drawing.

To discover the drawings children have been struggling with the most over lockdown we analysed more than 350,000 search terms which included the phrase 'how to draw'.

The 25 most searched terms were:

Search term Avg monthly searches (March - December 2020)
How to draw a rose 27,100
How to draw a dog 27,100
How to draw a face 22,200
How to draw eyes 22,200
How to draw a unicorn 14,800
How to draw a cat 14,800
How to draw a nose 14,800
How to draw a girl 12,100
How to draw a dragon 12,100
How to draw lips 12,100
How to draw a flower 12,100
How to draw a horse 9,900
How to draw pokemon 9,900
How to draw hands 9,900
How to draw anime 8,100
How to draw hair 8,100
How to draw a butterfly 8,100
How to draw a tree 8,100
How to draw a cartoon 8,100
How to draw a car 6,600
How to draw a bird 6,600
How to draw a person 6,600
How to draw a lion 6,600
How to draw a star 6,600
How to draw an elephant 6,600

Helping children improve their drawings

While art requires lots of freedom and creativity, Dan has these top tips to help parents improve their child’s drawings:

1) Encourage children to be imaginative - Drawing is all about creativity and being able to express yourself so try not to limit children on what they can or can’t draw

2) Keep an eye on how hard they grip their pencil - One of the most common mistakes I see children making is they grip their pencil too hard. This restricts the outlines they can produce and often results in them having to make more corrections

3) Don’t get too fixated on the detail - While it can be tempting for parents to encourage children to pay close attention to the minor details in their drawings often this can result in them producing less creative pieces. Allow children to use their imagination and often they will produce their best work

Dan has also revealed his top hacks for drawing some of the most difficult outlines, these can be found at the bottom of the post.

The importance of drawing on a child’s development

Not only is drawing an entertaining activity for both children and parents, it can also have an extremely positive impact on other aspects of learning as well.

Here, child development expert and founder of the Good Play Guide, Dr Amanda Gummer explains the benefits of children drawing:

"Drawing plays a crucial role in a child’s development as it links to all three of the main areas - physical, cognitive and emotional.

"From a physical sense drawing helps to refine a child’s fine motor control through hand strength and coordination. It also encourages children to be creative and think flexibly - something which is important for all of the STEM subjects.

"Art is a great way for children to express their emotions and many children find it easier to communicate through their drawings rather than spoken words."

Our blog post discussing how parents can use drawing as a vehicle to opening up conversations around the difficulties their children may be facing during the pandemic can be found here.

Dan's drawing hacks

With our research highlighting the drawings children have been struggling with the most during the pandemic, Dan has revealed some of his best drawing hacks to help:

Drawing a rose

Drawing a rose requires quite a bit of intricacy because it is made up of a number of petals often of varying shapes and sizes. It’s easiest to make a petal shape out of card paper, cut it out and trace it repeatedly to get a number of petal shapes. Trace a few different shapes to add a bit more variety

Drawing a dog

I find it easiest to start with the dog's face pretending it is sitting in front of me. So, begin with the nose, mouth, face and ears followed by the body and tail. This gives you clarity of the pose the dog is likely to be striking

Drawing a unicorn

With a unicorn being a mythical animal you should have some fun and get creative. Why not make it a superhero pink unicorn with blue tentacles?

Drawing a face

It’s important to learn the ratio of the facial features. Always start with the oval shape and divide that up to the facial features - eyes, nose, ears etc. Believe it or not but the eyes are halfway between the top and bottom of the oval shape

If you’re looking at ways to make homeschooling all the more fun and relaxing for your children, why not take a look at our range of kids bean bags - the perfect lockdown purchase.

Methodology

We used Google Ads keyword planner to analyse more than 350,000 search terms which included the phrase ‘how to draw’ to discover the drawings children have been struggling with the most since lockdown.

The phrases which had the highest average monthly search volume from March 2020 to December 2020 were deemed to be the drawings most difficult for children to perfect.

Posted in: Resources
17 February 2021