That's not honesty, that's just being an asshole. If a kid draws a picture and has obviously put some effort into it and is proud of it, I'm gonna be impressed

That's not honesty, that's just being an asshole. If a kid draws a picture and has obviously put some effort into it and is proud of it, I'm gonna be impressed and tell them so. If they obviously haven't tried very hard and I'm being called upon to judge it, i'd say it didn't look like they tried very hard. And kids usually respond well to that sort of criticism. But for kid's art to be objectively terrible, I don't even know what that could mean.