Quick sketch of a castle by a student

I'm pretty confident that all children are fascinated by castles and will draw them at some point. I know that when I was a kid that I engaged in that sort of thing as well.

I have this one particular student that is a speedy person just in general. He seems to feel as though he has to do everything as fast as possible and when we have an assignment he will almost always be the first one finished. I appreciate his dedication to efficiency and confidence that he needn't add anything else to his work but this can be problematic because I don't always have another activity planned.

Lately he seems to enjoy being told to draw just about anything after he completes what we were working on and lately I have come to see that he really enjoys drawing castles. This sketch of his was completed in just a few minutes and while it isn't exactly museum-worthy, the ease in which he draws things so quickly is impressive to me.

There have been times in the past where I would shower praise upon a student for things that aren't really even very well-done because it is important to encourage kids to grow or progress in art at their own pace. You don't want to shoot them down when they are experimenting or they will hesitate to try it again in the future.

When he was making this he had no point of reference and was just doing it from either memory or some idea that he conjured up on the spot. When he was "done" the other students were still working on the original project to I asked him if he remembered what I have said about shading and i put an eraser to the left of his paper and said "that's the sun, see if you can draw some shadows for me." And he kind of did so on the right side of the image.

I see great promise in this guy's future if he can perhaps just slow down a bit. He seems to think that everything that we do is a race to the finish and I don't really feel as though this is how art should be. But you also must keep in mind that I am a big believer in there never being a "correct" way to do art so maybe this speed could work in his benefit. Regardless, he is a good student and is well-behaved so I embrace the nuance that is his speedy-gonzales style of art!