Remember doing these in primary school?

Colour by Numbers: An Iconic Pastime™

These colouring activities were my bread and butter when I was about seven. Colouring the continents green and the oceans blue on a blank map of the world was probably one of the highlights of my primary school career. Why, you ask? Well, because the final product looked fantastic. It takes a lot of effort to ruin a pre-drawn picture.

See? It's pretty bad, but at least it's not horrific.

You know what wasn't my bread and butter at the time? Doing art from scratch. I have vivid memories of the time that my sixth grade class dedicated an entire afternoon to drawing an outback scene, complete with a shack, a lonely windmill, and a setting sun. Our classroom teacher gave us a fresh sheet of paper and a pack of oil pastels to share. She told us to try and replicate the piece using the materials we were given.That afternoon was a long and gruelling one. Sometimes I still see that outback scene in my nightmares. (I'm just kidding. But seriously, it was painful.)

But Erika, where are you going with this?

These scenarios illustrate the difference between product outcome and learning outcome. I'll go into these terms a bit more later on, but let me go back to the two scenarios I mentioned before. Well, both of the above scenarios contributed to my career as an incredibly mediocre artist in some way. But do you know which one played the biggest role in helping me to grow as an exceedingly casual artist? The second one.

Colour by Numbers or art from scratch: which had a greater impact on my art career?

Let's be real: Colour by Numbers is a great way to the pass the time. You can colour without really having to make any conscious choices. The activity tells you what colours to use and where, and the only rule you have to obey is that you have to (try to) colour within the lines.But the afternoon we spent trying to recreate that outback scene? Oh boy, let me tell you about all the things that I learned that day:

I learned how to use a new art medium

My experiences with art had previously been limited to graphite, crayons, and those triangular pencils that were really popular in primary school. Getting the chance to use oil pastels was a chance to explore a new art medium. In doing so, I was able to:

Expand my artistic capabilities: Oil pastels are very different to pencils, so you have to develop new techniques if you want to exploit it to the max.
Learn new methods for correcting errors: A cheap eraser isn't enough to correct mistakes that you make with oil pastels.
Make something new: Seriously. The stuff you can make with oil pastels is phenomenally different to what you can do with a couple of graphite pencils.

I learned how to fix my mistakes

Fixing mistakes on an oil pastel piece is very, very different to simply erasing part of a sketch and trying again. I tried various techniques for trying to fix mistakes that I made. As a ten-year-old, the following were working solutions to my immediate problems:

If it looks weird, try blending it with another colour
If it still looks weird, colour over it
If there's no saving it, it's time to use the white pastel

Perfect.

I learned how to deconstruct objectsThey don't exactly teach you how to draw desert shacks in geometry, so I had to learn how to draw one myself using shapes that I already knew about, like prisms and pyramids.

How the beans do you draw a shack? - Me at age 10, probably.

I learned how to develop and follow a logical process

With so many objects in the picture, I had to make some logical decisions about the order in which to draw said objects. What should I start with? The shack? Okay, let's draw the shack. I'll do the windmill next. Perhaps the sunset after that. Last of all, I need to colour in the background.

I learned how to improvise

There comes a time when you and another person need to use the brown pastel at the same time, so you learn to improvise. Ochre is a nice colour. It's close enough to brown. I can work with ochre.

Close enough.

I learned transferable skills and techniques

About two years after using oil pastels for the first time, I got the chance to use charcoal. That "blend our the mistakes" mindset that I learned from using oil pastels became relevant once again!

I learned how to think from different perspectives

Literally. Perspective drawing is a thing, and this very classroom was where I learned about vanishing points.

I learned how to be patient

Art takes time if you want it to look good. It takes patience and resilience. I used to get frustrated when it took longer than an hour to finish a piece, but these days, it no longer surprises me when artists say that they spent hours or days finishing a piece.I could go on and on about all the valuable things I learned that day, but the basic point of my tale is this: although starting from scratch brought me a lot of grief and frustration in the moment, I got a lot out of it. I doubt my parents still have the finished piece I made, but I remember that it stayed on the Art Wall far longer than any Colour by Numbers piece ever would have.

But Erika, why are you telling me this?

Well, the above circumstance is not unlike one particular question that we often get asked:

Product outcomes vs. learning outcomes: Why teach kids to code from scratch? (Art Edition)