Artistic development and using drawing to express the self

1. CHILDREN’S
CREATIVE
DEVELOPMENT

2. AIM
• To understand children’s Creative development
• Context
• Purpose
• Response

3. QUESTIONS?
• Why do children draw and scribble?
• What does their art mean?
• Why do they draw stick figures?
• What a child to take up a pencil and draw?
• What does it mean?
• Why is it important?

4. MAKING SENSE OF
CHILDREN’S ART
• Easier to appreciate children’s art rather than
understand or explain it?

5. STAGES OF CREATIVE
DEVELOPMENT

6. STAGES OF CREATIVE
DEVELOPMENT
• Scribble

7. FOCUS OF INQUIRY
• What children choose to include or represent (content)
• How children create (process)
• Why children create (motive)
• What they create as a result (product)

8. CONTENT
• Refers to the subject matter or object being
presented
• Content is often very personal
• Representations may operate on a number
of levels: for example those not intended as
communication or as a exploration of the
physical nature of the body

9. • Adults often seek to apply meaning where there may
be none or various

10. PROCESS
• The actions and skills involved
• Cutting, tearing, rolling, painting, marking etc
• Not all process will lead to a finished art product
• Enjoyed for its own sake

11. MOTIVE
• The reason underlying a child’s art
• Adults may explore work in relation to
‘what does it mean?’
• The child’s motivations vary from wanting to
draw a cartoon after seeing it on TV, to
hearing the sound of the marker pushed
hard against the paper, to drawing their
experience of a family day out as a gift to
a relative

12. PRODUCT
• Refers to the final outcome

13. MISINTERPRETATION
• There is a risk of misinterpretation – reading too much
into the art
• Study of individual children over extended period will
however reveal patterns and trends (style)

14. THEORIES AND STAGES
EXPLANATIONS
1. Physical theory
2. Emotional theory
3. Perceptual Theory
4. Cognitive Theory

15. • Developing creative confidence

16. THEORIES:
PHYSICAL
• The content, process, product, and style of children’s
art are indicative of their limited physical development
• Limited hand-eye coordination, fine motor control,
small muscle development, manual dexterity and visual
acuity (sharpness)

17. • Young children’s drawings often appears immature
and unintelligible as they are physically incapable of
anything else
• Could a child ‘intend’ on drawing ‘something’?
• Imitation of adults or other children?

18. EMOTIONAL
• The content and style of children’s art is
indicative of their emotional makeup,
personality, temperament, and affective
style
• Significant objects, people, emotions and
events are emphasized, exaggerated,
distorted by expressive use of colour, size,
shape, line, texture, and overall treatment

19. • Distortion and exaggeration are used to display
emphasis and communicate

20. PERCEPTUAL
• The content and style of children’s art reflects their
perceptual development
• Not the same as physical
• Perception is influenced by the neurophysiological
structure, personality, and prior learning

21. • The child draws what he or she perceives rather than
what he or she actually sees.
• Gaps:
• Art education – create the structural equivalent of the
perceived 3-d object on 2-d.
• Expressive therapeutic Art – Used as a vehicle for
communication and exploration

22. COGNITIVE
• The content and style of children’s art is
indicative of general intelligence and a
function of conceptualisation
• Children can only draw what they know
• The concept of the object will determine
how that object will be represented
• Young children rely on memories, images,
experiences and concepts

23. GOODENOUGH (1975)
DRAW A MAN TEST
• Non-verbal measure of intelligence
• It is assumed that the child’s drawing of the
human figure is a reflection of that child’s
concept of a man
• Conceptual maturity: appearance of limbs
and location, size and relationship of body
parts
• Accurate drawing = high intelligence

37. • Disadvantages: neglect of individual
differences, experiences, and
motivational, attitudinal, and
environmental factors that can foster or
inhibit concept formation.
• Ears may be particularly relevant to a
young girl with pierced ears.
• Omission of parts may be due to a whim
rather than knowledge, lack of time or
interest.
• Knowledge can improve observation and
via versa.

38. DEVELOPMENT
• Global
• General developmental: incorperates social, cultural,
personality, and environmental factors as well as
elements of former explainations
• Stage sequence
• Holistic

39. KNOWING THE STAGES WILL
HELP:
• Understand where a child is developmentally
• Set appropriate but flexible expectations, neither too
high or too low
• Plan a developmentally appropriate art program

40. • Serve as a framework for evaluation and for
conferences with parents
• Appreciate the process and products of during the
early years

41. • Artistic development follows a predictable sequence
• Fluid: can move back and forth
• Individual: own rate and pace

43. KELLOGG(1969)
• Scribble: foundation of future art
• 20 basic scribbles

45. • As the child proceeds from scribbling to picture
making, he or she passes through stages: placement,
shape, design, and pictorial.

46. PLACEMENT
• 17 different placement patterns by age 2

47. SHAPE
• Diagrams or gestalts contain shapes including a
circle, a cross, square, and rectangle

48. DESIGN
• Two diagrams are put together to make combines

49. • 3 or more diagrams constitute an aggregate
• 4-5 pictorial stage
• Universal across humans

50. PICTORIAL
• Structured designs begin to look like objects
• 1. Early pictorial
• 2. Later pictorial

51. STAGES
• Manipulative stage: processing, exploring, making,
doing, or playing with materials
• Representation stage: concern about artwork looking
like something

52. COGNITIVE
• Combination of cognitive and general
developmental
• Piaget: sensory-motor, concrete activity
to symbolic, higher-order conceptual
functioning
• Piaget: the graphic image is a form of
semiotic or symbolic function, and as such
is a representational activity that is
considered to be half-way between
symbolic play and mental image

53. • It is like play in its functional pleasure and
assimilation (incorporation) and like the
mental image in its effort at imitating the
real
• Piaget and Inhelder (1969), the very first
form of drawing does not seem imitative
but is more like pure play.
• Child realises marks and tries to repeat
them from memory. The child moves to
intention of action

54. PIAGET’S STAGES
• Sensory motor (0-2)
• Preoperational (2-7)
• Pre-conceptual (2-4)
• Intuitive (4-7)
• Concrete operations (7-11)
• Formal operations (11 –adult)

55. GARDNER (1980)
• Spontaneity of early creativity??
• Stage 1: Preschoolers; instinctively
creative. Fresh and unusual expression
• Stage 2: around 7 children’s imagination
appears stuck – stop creative process in
favour of language, games or peers
• 8-10 search for literal meanings rather
than metaphors: copy and collect
• Literal thinking: emphasis on following
rules

56. • Stage 3: 15-25 convergence of the abilities to plan a
creative project, implement, and evaluate it. Most
people at this time place emphasis on fixed
information or skills. Creative individual stands out as
taking risks, attempting new projects and preserving
individuality

58. 3 year old ‘circles’

59. 4 year old ‘baby in belly

60. LOWENFELD & BRITTAIN
(1987)
• 2-3 years – scribbling: beginning of self-expression
• 1½-2½ Sub stage: Disordered and random scribbling
• 2,2½-3 Sub stage: Controlled scribbling

61. • 3,3½-4 Sub stage: Named scribbling
• 4-7 pre-schematic
• 7-9 schematic: achievement of a form concept
• 9-12 dawning realism: the gang age
• 12-14 pseudo-naturalistic/realistic drawing
• 14-17 artistic decision: adolescent art