Exactly, evemomma.
I noticed this in paying close attention to my DD's art classes over the years-- the ones that seemed to further her interest most were the ones that allowed HER to control her own expression.
The rules were
questions for her to answer personally, not directives to be followed.
"What do you
see when you look at a cat? What shapes do you see in the cat's ears? Its head? What shapes are its eyes?"
Not:
a cat's head is an oval, its eyes are smaller ovals, and its ears are roughly triangle shapes on top of the oval of its head.
The latter is the worst sort of way (IMO) to teach children to love expressing themselves through art. It teaches them to express someone
else's vision. Not their own.
Community college drawing classes that my DD and DH have taken together have been TERRIFIC for her in this way-- the instructors have been marvelous about encouraging students to follow some basic guidelines about learning to work with particular media (helpful), but most critically-- insightful about ways of cultivating an artist's eye in seeing a subject. The best of those experiences and educators are not directions-oriented with an eye toward a particular product or even style.
I never realized that art teachers actually encouraged people to do their own thing like that until I saw it. It was really amazing, and it was like an epiphany for both my husband and my daughter (both perfectionists with truly vicious internal editors).
