By Ruth Finch

This summer, Lois Buchter filmed the first season of a children’s art education show she calls “Drawing Magic.” She’s dedicated her life to art — and to teaching it. 

Buchter says art is something that’s always come naturally to her. “I’’ve never had an art project not work, so it’s something that comes rather easily to me. I have no fear in art.”

She got married young, and her parents pushed her to study business in college. After raising two children, she and her husband separated. Buchter had a nest egg, and she was finally able to invest her time and money into her passion. She opened the Keller, Texas franchise of the Monart Art School in 2007 and ran the school until 2013.

After working in design at Pottery Barn and French textile company Home Heritage, she moved to California in 2018 to take care of her now 93-year-old father. That didn’t stop her from pursuing her passion. It also didn’t stop her from going back to school.

“I went back to college full time back in 2017 and 2018 and studied film,” Buchter says. “I’ve been writing for over 20 years and I thought, I’m going to check to see how well this transforms in the class.”

Buchter works in a myriad of mediums, including stained glass, and sculpting in marble and clay. “I really find that [to be] a wonderful medium. … I’m a rock girl,” she says. “My writing is another form of creativity that’s taken over. I’ve been a screenwriter for 20 years and wrote three novels last year while taking care of my dad.”

But not having an art class was nagging at her brain. She tried to make a couple instructional YouTube videos, but she decided she wanted something with a higher production value. She had time to develop something and last December decided on a television show.

In “Drawing Magic,” Buchter utilizes the Monart drawing technique in her teaching, in which children are taught to break down the physical world into five different shapes: dots, circles, and angled, straight and curved lines. The philosophy behind the method, as well as Buchter’s philosophy, is that everyone can learn how to draw. 

“Just like learning to play the piano, you wouldn’t say, ‘Ooh, I don’t have that gene,’ but people say it when it comes to drawing,” Buchter says. “Anybody can do it. You just have to sit down and practice.”

In order to fund her show, Buchter turned to the community for help. “We did a crowdfunding campaign this summer and filmed the whole first season, and I’m hoping to get it out into a streaming platform,” she says. “So the goal is to have five seasons. … Each season would be concentrated on a different continent, animals, flora and fauna of that continent.”

Buchter’s “Drawing Magic” show aims to teach kids how to draw, and draw well. Buchter says that it’s unique in its pursuit of realism as an achievable goal for young artists. 

“There is a lot of art instruction out there, but [it’s] a lot of busy work, cartoony,” she says. “From having my school for seven years, I know what kids want and how they react to different things. They really want to truly learn how to do it.”

Buchter says that in a fast-paced world, sometimes kids need a reason to slow down and focus. “There’s children who have the natural affinity to draw and do that quiet creativity, but we’re losing some of that because there’s so much in the digital world right now that flashy flashy go, go, go, and kids need — your brain needs — that training to have that quiet concentration. Drawing is a cornerstone to so much in creativity, so I love being able to give that gift.”

This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.