We decided to pull out our drawing/art books last Weds and Thursday – Draw Write Now and a few Think Draw books.  We’ve had these same ones since the boys were 5-6.  It was fun to revisit them, but left a feeling of “We’ve done this for years”. My oldest son really perfected the Draw Write Now drawings, seeing the detail, adding the landscape and color and darker outline. I enjoyed seeing the growth. And yet, he doesn’t doodle on his own. I think he thinks he needs to be able to create a finished landscape or such.  That evening – We received an offer to review a product called Wordtoons in our email.  WOW. Isn’t God Amazing! I said my thankfulness to the Lord then quickly downloaded and printed the book. I used the draft/quick setting, and the graphics printed out really fast and clear. At almost 40 pages, Wordtoons has a nice assortment of pictures to draw for all personalities.  Our family quickly sketched out a few that evening.  Thursday of this week, which seems to be our art day, we took it out again and the boys got excited once more.  “This is really cool!”, “I Love the Alien!”, “Really Awesome!” were some of the random remarks.  My 11 year old quickly went to the Alien page and sketched it out.  He loved the option of adding the landscape, and he enjoys the hints on what to add to the pictures. My 9 yr old son quickly drew out several of the Wordtoons, one after the other and then ran off.  “What do you think?”, I asked – “It’s great mom!”, his reply and outside he went.

Later that day, we went to visit our new library, and they have some architect type writing tables.  Jon begged the new librarian for some printer paper and set up a “class” on the tables.  He set up 2 booths with pencils and pens found randomly at the library stations, and offered his Drawing Class to anyone who would listen.  Here is the sampling from his classes. 

So is the book easy to understand? Yes.  Can you dive deeper with more details, training the eye to see all that is there? Yes. Will it frustrate the beginning drawer? Maybe the just forming letters crowd, I would think that you need to have a grasp of drawing your letters well, and how to draw curves, lines, circles.  You need to be able to see the details in what is added to each step.

But greater than that – does it make you want to draw when the book is closed? Yes. Does it spark the desire to show others what you have learned? Yes.  Both boys are enjoying afternoons of newly sparked desire to draw.

I give our Petra School approval on this book – a new must have for your curriculum shelf. 🙂

Lookie what we earned: