You can survive without knowing how to read, but reading is extremely helpful. You can be creative without knowing how to draw, but drawing is extremely helpful when doing creative work. Researchers have found that careful visual observation drawing is done in the right hemisphere of the brain where intuitive and creative thinking occurs. Rational thinking, on the other hand, happens in the left hemisphere of the brain where the trite schematic drawings are stored in the brain (childlike stick figures, triangle nose images, etc.). This may indicate that observation drawing practice develops the intuitive part of the brain. This may be true, but if not, their are other basic reasons to learn drawing in order to be more creative.

Drawing is an extremely useful, if not essential tool used in creative thinking. Drawing is very helpful to most students and adults in the development of all kinds of creative ideas and in problem solving. Imagination means visualization. Learning to draw develops the portion of the brain that visualizes. Visualizing is used in all kinds of creative planning activities including charting, graphing, mapping, planning structures, planning communities, and design of every kind. Creative workers employ drawing and visualization to check out many scenarios before they make decisions.

While planning a creative project, drawings are constantly being modified and refined. Creative planners have learned to expect the drawing process to bring out many new ideas that would have been missed otherwise. Drawings allow creative collaborations with non-drawing participants whose creativity is facilitated by the drawings. Drawing for a creative worker is a dynamic conversation with the plan and the other stakeholders. The drawing talks to the designers and the designers responds with new variations until the best possible outcome is realized.

I once visited Don Reitz in Wisconsin after he had added an sizable addition to his house. Don was on the art faculty at the University of Wisconsin. He is a very creative potter and sculptor whose work is very expressive, but I do not believe he draws things before making them. The clay itself is his drawing material. He does very expressive work by responding directly to the material. Drawing first on paper would probably deflate his enthusiasm for the actual creative work. When he decided to have workers build an addition to his house, he decided to try the same approach. When the excavator came, they walked around, looked at the site, and decided where to dig, and so on. Everything worked out fairly well with a nice two story addition to his house. However, fairly late in the project they could not find a good place for a staircase between the two floors. To solve this, he had a fairly small spiral kit installed. Had he used drawings, he may have noticed this in time to create a more elegant solution that would allow easier and safer transport of furniture to the upper level.

Drawing is not merely a medium of creative planning. Just like clay is the immediate, expressive, and vital "drawing" medium for Don Reitz, drawing on paper can also be a vital, expressive, and creative end product for may artists.

When art teachers teach children how to learn observation drawing, they are facilitating creative thinking in many other areas of their lives. When we teach expressive drawing, we are engaged in actual creative thinking and acting. Children need to learn both. Every scribbling child is being expressive almost without knowing it. Observation skill practice can begin fairly young, and at least by grade one. Expressive work should also continue to be nurtured.

Without deliberate drawing instruction, only a small percentage of children learn to draw because most children lack the instinct to keep drawing on their own as soon as their critical sensitivities outpace their observation drawing skills. Only a few people would learn to read and write without teachers. Most would give up without teachers or parents to coach this learning. In such a culture, we might say they that most people lack the talent to read and write. That in fact is the culture we now have in many communities in regard to observation drawing. Children do not learn how to learn drawing because they do not have art teachers or they have art teachers who do not know how to teach drawing. In the US about 40 percent of the elementary schools do not have art teachers. This important mind development is missed and much creativity is missed when this tool is abandoned during our development.

Art teachers need to help children begin to make visual comparisons and represent them in their drawings. I use lots of open questions that remind children to observe more carefully. I do not draw in front of the students because it encourages them to copy my drawing and they still do not learn to observe. I go over to the thing being observed and carefully point out how to notice things. I ask them to practice drawing in the air while observing before committing pencil to paper. Students are asked to notice contour, size, texture, value gradations, proportions, and every kind of relationship in the thing, person, or animal observed. I ask them to use a pencil at arm's length as a sighting device to compare sizes, angles, and so on. I often encourage the use of touch, and include smell, taste, and sound as motivation and when experiencing the world. I avoid copy work, formulas, and drawing tricks. I do not give answers, but encourage experimentation and exploration to find answers. I provide aides to observation including viewfinders to frame compositions and pencil blinders (a square of tag board with the pencil through it) to to hide the paper and encourage looking at the thing being observed. When mistakes are obvious to the student, I encourage another line before erasing the mistake. "Don't nix it until you fix it." Sometimes three or four tries are needed, but this is learning. The purpose of practice is to make it easy and to make it better.

RITUALIZE IT
Drawing is learned with regular practice. A few minutes of drawing practice time becomes a classroom ritual for every art class session. Art is much more than drawing, but there is probably nothing more basic than drawing. Observation and expressive drawing are the descriptive and expressive reading and writing of the brain's visual development. The brain's visual development is basic to the brain's facility to imagine, to do visual scenario making, and to be creative. Therefore, teaching observation and expressive drawing is a basic part of teaching creativity.