December 21, 2021

Learning through play doesn’t have to stop at childhood

In January 2019, a study found that growing up in a house full books can be a major boost to literacy and numeracy. Could art supplies work the same way?

Availability leads to Opportunity

Occassionally, I get in the mood to play with stuff. Random stuff. And whilst I love watercolour, sometimes a mood strikes and collage seems like the fun thing to do. Other times, it’s coloured pencil rendering, or playing with ink, or playing with oil or acrylic paint. And so if that mood strikes and those materials aren’t available, neither is the opportunity. This is the story I told myself in order to give myself permission to start filling my house with art supplies to see if the study about books holds true for other things, too.

Opportunity leads to Experimentation

With a house full of art supplies, I’m more able to act on impulse. I feel like painting in acrylic? Bam! I whip out the acrylic paints and I’m on my way. If I feel like some considered, almost meditative pencil rendering? Bam. I’ve got that, too. I still consider myself a watercolourist at heart – it’s the medium I tend to enjoy the most, especially for illustration – but that doesn’t mean I can’t dabble in the others.

And the thing about dabbling in mediums other than my favourite one is that I learn things that my favourite one can’t teach me. I know that because of my dabbling in acrylic painting, I’m developing a better sense of tonal values and contrast. I didn’t know that before I started but it’s definitely happening. And because of my access to and use of coloured pencils, I discovered their strength in helping to amplify my watercolour work. It also helped to reinforce my love of watercolour.

This idea of learning through undirected play – the thing we encourage children to do so much of because we know it has benefit to them – seems to stop at some point after childhood ‘ends’. But isn’t the end of childhood just a manufactured idea? One that lines up strongly with ‘the time to get serious – set goals and achieve them’ as adults: the moment when we’re expected to contribute to the industrial complex of Work?

The truth is that experimentation – learning through play – isn’t just a child thing, it’s a human thing. And, in our attempts to transition ‘aimless children’ into ‘goal-seeking and productive adults’, we’ve also de-prioritised this method of experimentation as a way to learn. In fact, it’s so well removed from our way of thinking that we have to re-learn it as a skill as an adult. Corporations call this ‘Innovation’ but it is, in essence, learning through play.

Experimentation leads to Innovation

Followers of my work may notice something – my work is changing. I can feel it and I suspect that the growing availability of art supplies in my house has something to do with it – first we shape the tools, then the tools shape us.

Rosie the Rhinoceros is the first time I’ve used ink in a book. Why? Because I had it laying around one day – a 3-year-old ink bottle – and I just decided that I felt like playing with it. As I played, I learned what it was good for (and what it wasn’t good for). I used cheap paper, cheap brushes, and focussed on feeling ink – how it moves, how it dries, how it works. A short while after this, the Rosie manuscript came along. She was a bold, flowing character with more energy than watercolour was able to capture. I knew, intuitively, that ink was going to be needed for her.

And now that Rosie is out in the world, it’s led to additional interest for ink work – a manuscript of similar energy arrived. The work you do is the work you get.

Innovation leads to change

Whether its books at hand, or art supplies at hand, surrounding ourselves with novel ways of getting in touch with how we feel helps clarify things for ourselves. And the clearer we are about who we are, the better we can be for others. As someone famous once said, the only constant in life is change. But goal-driven change (I’m here and I want to get there) is only one approach. The other one – the much more interesting one – seems to be “I’m here, and I have no idea where I’m going, but I’ll play my way there”. And all it takes is a little access to something different in the first place.

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