The Complete Guide to Children's Drawings: Accessing Children‘s Emotional World through their Artwork. Michal Wimmer

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СКАЧАТЬ and colorful journey in the world of children’s drawings. I hope the book will give you tools to gain a new perspective of your child’s drawings, your child’s world and even the child within you…

      Michal Wimmer

1 Introduction

      Developmental Stages in Children’s Drawings

      When you observe a child’s drawings over an extended time period, you will notice trends of change and development. Without any deliberate adult intervention, the child advances from stage to stage and develops his abilities. Nevertheless, despite evidence of clear and general developmental stages, I do not recommend analyzing a child’s artwork in strict terms of how it matches a certain population norm. When I interpret a child’s drawings, I do not compare them to his friends’ drawings but to his own developmental trajectory. Therefore, the ages noted in the titles below are suggestive only and should be treated with caution.

      Age norms are important. However, if your 4 year-old child still scribbles – unlike his friends who are already drawing human figures – this does not necessarily attest to any developmental lag. The ages appearing below indicate developmental periods and their general characteristics, but you must bear in mind that each child has his own combination of such characteristics, some enhanced, and others nonexistent, etc. Moreover, the developmental trajectory and the transitions between stages are individual. Some children may skip a certain stage or regress to a previous one before moving forward again.

      Stage 1: Spontaneous Scribbling – Ages 1½–2½

      The first times a child holds a pencil and discovers what it can do are highly significant to his development. In families with several older children, you can see babies as young as 9 months imitate their brothers by using drawing tools and admiring their own work.

      In many senses, these occasions are similar to the moments a child realizes he can produce sounds and begins to speak. Scribbling is thus akin to the infantile muttering. In both cases, the child begins a prolonged learning process by way of trial and error. He moves the drawing tool (changes his voice) in different directions and observes the different results on the page. Moreover, just as infantile murmuring or crying expresses a certain need or emotion (hunger, anger, boredom, etc.) scribbling is intentional, albeit pre-schematic.

      To the untrained eye, drawings made at this stage would seem like senseless doodling. However, a closer look reveals that children definitely develop distinctive scribbling styles.

      At this stage, the child attaches great importance to the dynamic aspect of drawing, and delights in the sensory experience of moving the drawing tool across the page. Lines start and end at random, and if there are any geometric shapes in the drawings, they are usually drawn inconsistently and disproportionately. Given these factors, I recommend checking that at least three months have passed since the child had first began to experience drawing before his artwork can be analyzed for emotional meanings.

      Figure 1-1:Inconsistent and unstructured lines

      In the following drawing by a 22-month old girl, you can see lines that extend beyond the page’s boundaries, lines with different lengths and directions, without any consistency or personal preference. You can also see asymmetric loops, lines drawn erratically across the pate, cyclical circular scribbles and insertions of the drawing tool into the page, whether vertically or diagonally, to create a “point map” (children enjoy doing this very much, and tend to imitate one another around the drawing table at kindergarten).

      In terms of psychological development, Sigmund Freud (1954) calls this age span the oral stage, a period characterized by children’s tendency to taste paints and crayons, to check what sounds they produce and to explore them tactually as an integral part of the creation process.

      Stage 2: Structured Scribbling – Ages 2½–3½

      At this stage, the child begins to plan the drawing in advance. Basic geometric shapes begin to appear on the page, including circles (or quasi-circles), and squares (or lines that cross to form a square area). This time, they do not appear accidentally; on the contrary, the child would often use up entire pages in recurring attempts to draw the same shape. Finally, at this stage we begin to see children who critically observe their artwork as it unfolds, or even stare fixedly at the page before they even start.

      Usually, children at the structured scribbling stage are happy to talk about what they have drawn, and will explain about the various elements on the page.

      Figure 1-2:Drawing accompanied by the sound of a motor

      Although the drawing still looks like a mess, the child sees it in a completely different light. For example, a 34 month-old boy made the sound of a motor while drawing this example and when he finished, exclaimed: “I drew a car!”

      Figure 1-3:Drawing accompanied by a barking sound

      Similarly, a 31 month-old girl drew the following disarray of short and disjointed lines, and while drawing, she said: “This is a barking dog, woof, woof”.

      Figure 1-4:Initial attempt at formal structuring: drawing a circle

      Drawing a circle requires meticulous planning. The child has to start at a certain point, move the drawing tool around a central axis (this requires optical control) and arrive at the starting point. At this stage, you can see children go past the starting point because they get carried away with the movement and find it difficult to stop. You can see the opposite phenomenon in the following drawing by a 38 month-old. This boy took great care to structure the circle appropriately, and although he didn’t manage to draw it accurately at the endpoint, he returned there until a closed and well-structure circle was drawn. You can also see various snail-like shapes, which also belong to the circle family and require careful planning and executive control.

      Figure 1-5:Tadpole figures

      Once the child has become adept at drawing circles, human figures begin to appear (at this preliminary stage, they are called “tadpoles”). To draw a tadpole, the child uses lines acquired in the previous stage to represent the four limbs. These are attached directly to a large, round head. Children with the same level of skill also draw suns with linear rays.

      In terms of cognitive development, this stage marks the beginning of symbolic cognition: the child can now use his drawings to represent events along a temporal sequence, distinguishing between past and future events. The child free-play style and the stories related to the drawing will be more and more clearly related to actual experiences during the day, and at the same time the child’s verbal skills will develop significantly.

      Freud identifies this age span as the transition from the oral to the anal stage, marked by improved motor control and brain-eye-hand coordination. The child internalizes cause-and-effect processes and therefore examines his drawing at the end of the process, rather than just enjoys making it. Piaget defines this period as the beginning of the pre-conceptual (pre-operational) stage, in which the child solves problems by trial and error, his thought is concrete and reality is perceived as a static СКАЧАТЬ