The pencil marks on my mind

An exhibition of cartoon books drew large numbers to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing last year. [Photo/China Daily]

Today many places in Beijing that provide children's art education start with colors. And colors come in a great variety of forms, be it pastel, print or paper cutting. Pencil sketch classes are open to students when they reach 11 or 12.

"We introduce them to pencil sketch at that point since grown-up children usually have higher expectation for their works," says Wang Lijuan, founder of Lijuan Experimental Art Education Institution. "And pencil sketching can be an effective tool in studying an object."

Almost needless to say, many of history's master painters used pencil study to record and hone their ideas before they got down to work on the walls and ceilings of those grand cathedrals. Yet very often the studies themselves are masterpieces in their own right, their emphasis just as important as what is omitted.

The German artist Gerhard Richter once said: "Art is the highest form of hope." When I was little I used to paint for so long that my limbs went numb and my grandmother had to lift me up from the floor. Today, every time I look back at those concentrated hours, my heart is filled with gratitude.

Then, there were all those school holidays spent drawing in the classrooms at the "cultural palace". Many things can never be erased by the rubber of time, like the deep shadow cast by light on an apple, or the folds of velvet drapes that served as the background. We were translating colors into black and white and everything in between. It's poetic.

These days I take my 4-year-old daughter to an art museum or gallery in Beijing once in a while. My hope is that art will extend its roots into her heart's fertile soil, just as a giant banyan tree does in the ground around it.

And while we are there, I always linger a little longer in front of an inspiringly executed pencil study or charcoal painting, if there happens to be one.

They remind me of the days when easel was a sacred word for me, one that connected me with the blissful neverland of an artist. Every time I looked up from my own work, from where I stood in the classroom, I saw many easels all around me. Carrying the works of other child students, they formed a forest.

Just one more time I long to be lost in that forest.