Doodling, drawing and painting to a better imagination.

If you want something custom-made, which means you want a particular pattern, design or structure, then you have at least an idea of how it should look like and what it can be used for.

Go to a carpenter to have a custom-made built-in cupboard and shelves for your house and he would like you to draw the object or objects you wish to order. If you do not know how to draw, then you have to be able to describe precisely what is wanted. If that carpenter can draw then, from the description, the objects will be well illustrated. From the illustration, you will be able to see whether the objects drawn are exactly what is needed.

The outcome of this will depend upon your imagination, description, the carpenter's understanding of what is required and the illustration either of you could produce.

If your imagination is faulty, the description would be hazy with a number of things not pictured accurately and the end product will not be satisfactory, especially when the carpenter is unable to illustrate what you desire.

Thus, being good in imagination and drawing are important. As someone pointed out: a picture is worth a thousand words.

How then can we further stimulate the imagination?

One way is to encourage drawing. I am not talking about an artist's piece of work. I am just encouraging children to draw simple objects, getting that part of the brain to focus on an object and drawing simple shapes like circles or balls, cylinders, squares, rectangles and boxes, triangles and pyramids, oblong boxesand egg-shapes. From these shapes, all the other shapes in this world is derived to form more complex shapes.

After that allow imagination to run free to form any other shape. It can be interesting if there is sufficient encouragement from parents and teachers.

However, I would caution that competitions should not be held at too early an age as they have the tendency to destroy interest or discourage those who are not as capable. The aim here is not to produce artists but to enoucrage imagination and the skill of drawing.

In fact, have you noticed that there are very young children who concentrate more on knowledge of colours, how to light and shade, rather than give their imagination to produce the child's view of things. What we see as winners are not children's art but adults' art.

And what is even worse is adults trying to get their children to win by telling them; sometimes it's more like dictating them what colours to use and where certain parts have to be darkened. The poor child is even scolded for darkening the wrong places. Imagine being scolded for not able to imagine where it should be darker! In such a situation, who is the actual winner? Of course, the child does get his/her prize. Except for that piece of pride, what has the child gained. Especially so when that child one day discovers fro himself, he is no artist in the true sense of the word but merely someone good at drawing and colouring or painting.

What about his imagination? Did it help his/her imagination? If a parent were to say that it really did, I would be the first to congratulate the person, for that is an achievement, no matter how we look at it.

Encouraging children to doodle, draw and paint can help to stimulate imagination. Of course, some children would find other ways better than this. After all, all children are individuals, and they respond to things differently.

This only means that parents themselves have to be creative.