Just like learning to walk and talk, artistic development has its milestones. Drawing representationally is about seeing things in an abstract way and simplifying them into values, lines, shapes and forms. Why is it that many of us think we can only draw stick people? When did our development stop? Drawing is a skill and like all skills observation and practice are essential to improvement. Providing your students with the background information as to where they are developmentally is an incredible place to start. Once they understand their own stage, they will see ahead to the areas that need improvement. Teaching people to see is the most essential gift you can provide your students. Move them past the stage of symbol-making into the world they crave.
Consider: Spend time thinking about how children’s artistic development gives you information about each child and how do students find their voice in their explorations and creations?
The pioneer in children’s artistic development research is Viktor Lowenfeld who is the author of ” Creative and Mental Growth”. His work and that of Rhoda Kellogg in “Analyzing Children’s Art” have dramatically changed the way art is taught to children.
Viktor Lowenfeld developed Stage of Artistic Development which is based upon the child’s age with relation to ability. Though this theory of age-to-stage development is out-of-date, we can still learn, evaluate and appreciate the basic principles presented.
stages_of_artistic_development_in_children_2013-14
Irene R. Naested states in her article “An Integrated Approach to Tech Art”:
Children all pass through the same stages in their development, but the pace of their development varies. For example, two young children of an identical age might be at different stages in their ability to use a pencil. Rhoda Kellogg (1970), who collected and classified children’s artwork, was one of the first educators to study children’s drawings from the perspective of their stages of development. She discovered that children in almost every country in the world begin drawing at about the same time and show a similarity in developmental patterns.
DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES OF CHILDREN’S DRAWINGS
Scribble
This stage is typical of children between 18 months and 3 years.
- Scribbles are random. Children are exploring art materials in a playful way.
- Scribbles move from uncontrolled to progressively more controlled.
- This stage allows children to learn to hold a pencil as well as to determine whether they are left or right-handed.
- While you may not see it, some scribbles are named. The child will point to an object found in the scribble.
The first scribbles will be random marks. The child gains satisfaction for here there is active involvement in self-expression outside of crying. The average child starts scribbling around the age of two. The child is experiencing pure pleasure from the haphazard marks. The range and variety of scribbles is very great and relates to the child’s own development and experiences in his environment.
Disordered Scribbling
During this stage, the marks on the paper can go in many directions. Where the child is drawing (on a table or floor) and the crayon size will influence the direction. The size of the scribbles shown on the paper is relative to the size of the child. At some point, the child will discover that there is some relation to his motions and the marks on the paper. This may occur six months or so after the child starts scribbling. Enjoyment of this activity encourages the child to repeat and vary his motions. This helps in the development of motor coordination and feelings of mastering a new task.
Naming the Scribbles
A parent may not recognize scribbles as anything, but by around the age of 3 1/2 to 4 the child begins naming scribbles. He has begun thinking in terms of pictures. Before this stage he was satisfied with the motions themselves, the activity was purely kinesthetic. In the naming scribbling stage the child connects the motions with the world around him. He is beginning to think in terms of pictures or symbols. The naming of scribbles shows that the child is ordering his thinking into symbols or a “schema”
Scribbling helps children with:
Physical Development
- Hand-eye coordination
- Fine and gross muscle development
- Hand manipulation
Language Art
- Naming or labelling
- Conversation
Penmanship
- Stroking
- Finger dexterity
- Fine muscle control
Guidance
- Self-confidence
- Independence
- Initiative
- Enjoyment
Motivation
At no point should a child be inhibited, criticized or corrected while creating art during any stage of his development. Usually in the first stages of scribbling no special motivation is
needed except to provide the child with the proper materials and the encouragement to go ahead with the activity.
The child’s own experiences are fertile topics that can motivate and excite them in art activities. Class field trips, stories from books, personal experiences etc. should be discussed before an art lesson to help the child to draw from his own vision, and thus enjoy and learn during the art lesson.
Art Materials
The best materials for this stage are simple and easy to manipulate, fat black crayons or markers, 11″x 18″ (or smaller) white paper, white chalk on black paper or a chalkboard. I do not recommend the use of finger paints for children of any age. Children do not learn to use tools, in this case, a paintbrush, nor does finger paint encourages the manipulation of paint. The finger paint distracts the children from the painting process, while they soil everything within their reach, the painting activity is forgotten.
Paints should be thick tempera or poster paints with large white paper and round medium-sized brushes. Playdough, or easy to form modelling clay is wonderful in the development of fine and gross motor coordination. Occasional use of collage materials from random shapes (NOT PRECUT SHAPES) can add fun and involvement in cutting and pasting. Stencils can be useful if limited to the child manipulating and learning how to use the stencil.
Allow the children to cut their own shapes using safety scissors. They will derive pure enjoyment from this activity and show great pride in their achievement. Cutting with scissors can involve a child completely in his discovery in the use of a tool. A child’s fine motor coordination can develop rapidly through the mastery of cutting paper. Some children will not possess the gross motor coordination to even hold a pair of scissors, however, tearing paper into shapes can fulfill the child’s need to manipulate paper into shapes of his own design.
Pre-Schematic Stage
First Representational Attempts: The Pre-schematic Stage 4-7 years
A different mode of drawing has begun- the conscious creation of form. From the disordered scribbling to naming the scribbles now the child has developed a way to represent form. In scribbling the child was mainly interested in a kinesthetic activity, now she is involved in representing the world around her.
- Drawings become more complex, although they are usually unrealistic.
- Children will tend to use their favourite colours, rather than represent objects with inaccurate colours.
- The drawings of people are very simple with few features.
- Objects in drawings float in space. They are not anchored.
- “Tadpole Figure People” are drawn with a very large head on a small body with extended arms.
- Interiors and exteriors are shown at the same time. (X-Ray Drawings)
- beginning to see connections between the shapes that they draw and the world around them
- makes the first connection to communicate through their drawings, children begin to tell stories and work out their problems
- a tangible record of child’s thinking process
A child’s first representational attempts grow directly from symbols the child was using during the scribbling stage. The circles and longitudinal lines will come together to form a person. Usually, the child’s first representational symbol is a man. The man is typically drawn with a circle for a head and two vertical lines as arms legs or a body. At this stage, a child is constantly searching for new concepts, so while the “man” is always of primary importance its form may change many times.
The constant searching for new concepts will continue until about age 7. By this time the individual pattern or “schema” will begin to appear. The child is involved in discovering his own patterns, which will at times translate into direct and immediate representations of places and events. A child’s feelings can have a profound effect upon his art creation. The more stimulating a child’s experiences the more dramatic and exciting his artwork will be. The child discovers there is a relationship between his drawings and his outside experiences
Children continue to develop increased hand-eye coordination, fine and gross muscle development, and self-confidence during this stage.
Additionally, they are developing increased abilities in:
- Observation
- Thinking
- Problem-solving
- Feelings of competence
The child in the pre-schematic stage is developing an understanding of spatial relationships. The child may always appear in the center of the picture, while objects seem to float around in space. This is because the child is just learning to perceive his place in the world around him.
The size of objects in a child’s picture may appear very different than what they are in reality. This is because the child places important objects larger on the picture than unimportant objects. For example, very large hands are common among children when they are drawing pictures of themselves involved in a hands-on activity
Motivation
Any motivation at this stage should start with the child himself. The child must feel art to be an important stimulating experience. A child should become involved in and identified with his art experiences. Become involved with the children but let them work on their own level, and in their own way. Be sure that you find meaning and excitement in the art experience, with lots of encouragement and positive energy for the children.
Materials
Since the child at this age is excited by his ability to represent what is meaningful to him, any art experience should provide the opportunity for developing mastery of the material itself. Since the PROCESS OF CREATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PRODUCT an art material should be selected that meets the needs of the age group for which it was planned. Constantly changing materials or using cute things in an art project can undermine the integrity of the child’s artistic expressions. Good quality crayons on 12″X18″ white paper, thick tempera or poster paint with a round medium-sized bristle brush, clay, markers, collage materials, are all excellent art materials for this age group.
Schematic Stage
This stage is typical of children between 5 to 8.
- Drawings of people become more proportional and more detailed.
- Colours become more realistic and stereotypical (grass is green, the sky is blue).
- Skyline and ground lines start to show.
- Children have a schema about a way of drawing. For example, a house will be drawn the same way in many drawings.
- Children will often create stories to go along with their drawings.
- Clearly assign shapes to their objects and they are attempting to communicate to their shapes
- Defined order in the development of the drawing as well
- Clear separations between sky and ground with little in between
- Objects often find the ground in placement
- Objects of importance are drawn larger and are most often drawn from left to right
- The ground is at the bottom and the sky is at the top
- Houses are usually two simple shapes
- The fun stage for drawing to have students describe what is going on in their drawings
- Students develop a set of symbols
At this stage, children will be developing skills important for art, science and mathematics including:
- Trial and error
- Patterns
- Shapes
- Numbers
- Interpretation
The Dawning- Realism Stage
Typical of Children: 9-11 years
One of the outstanding characteristics of this stage is that the child realizes he is part of society—a society of peers. This is the stage where children are learning to work with groups of other children and cooperate much as they will in adult life. The discovery of sharing similar interests, secrets, and the pleasure of doing things together, are all very fundamental. There is a growing awareness that one can do more in a group than alone. This age is the time of groups or gangs. The word gang is not used negatively here. The reference is towards hanging out with friends in groups. This age shows an increasing interest in “social independence” from adult interference, learning about social structures in a personal way.
At this age, the child is becoming more aware and sensitive to his environment. He is becoming more critical of himself and others. He may hide his drawings from inquisitive adults who may make some remark about their efforts. Studies have shown that there is a surprising similarity between drawings by children of this age and the drawings of untrained adults.
Children of this age have a strong desire to produce naturalistic or photographically real pictures. Although their experiences have much to do with their artistic expression they are easily frustrated if their work does not appear the way they think it should. Be patient with children at this age, they are their own worst critics, adult interference can only cause more frustration in the child.
- Drawings become far more detailed.
- Much more spatial perspective is evident.
- Children at this stage may become very frustrated if they are unable to create a realistic picture.
- This is the time when children may express “I can’t draw.”
- Schematic generalization no longer suffices to express reality
- Children begin to compare their work become more critical of it
- Students want to know “How to draw” in a step by step formula
- Students are making connections between their drawings and their real-life around them. Something happens between this stage and the next, many people never progress past this stage as they become aware that drawing takes more practice and is not a step-by-step process.
- Students struggle with perspective, foreshortening and similar spatial issues as they learn how to see
- It’s really about making a connection-drawing is about observation. When we see things with our eyes, we see things in a very abstract manner, we see lines, shapes, forms and values and it’s our mind that puts this information together. In order to draw well and draw representationally, we have to reverse the process, we have to tell ourselves what we are actually seeing and put that on the piece of paper. Students need to understand that they are simply seeing values, lines, shapes and forms in an abstract way in a representational way.
The schema is no longer adequate to represent the human figure during the gang age. The concept of the human figure as expressed during the schematic stage will give way to the differentiation between male and female and much more detail will appear. This is the stage when the baselines will no longer sufficiently express their understanding of the world. The change from a single baseline to the discovery of the plane is usually a rapid one. We also find that the skyline is no longer drawn across the top of the page but now extends all the way down to the horizon. He has not yet developed a conscious visual perception of depth, but he has taken the first steps toward such awareness. The child will begin overlapping objects to show their relationship to one another in space.
At this stage, the child is becoming sensitive to the qualities of a material. It is of great importance, that children be given the opportunity to improvise independently. There is a greater ability to use tools and multi-media materials. The emphasis should be on the process of manipulating and exploring the material and not upon achieving a “nice-looking” finished product. Boys and girls will also have a preference for materials that they want to work with. Ask them what they are interested in working with. Provide enough variety to involve all of the children in a creative enjoyable art activity.
Motivation
Motivation during this period must stress the newly discovered social independence in order to give the child a feeling of self-esteem. An art experience must give him an opportunity to express the growing awareness of self, and to satisfy a new curiosity for the environment. It must also inspire the child to use the newly found methods of group cooperation as beneficial means for achieving results. Group projects are best suited to this age group. Many experiences can motivate a group of children to work on a cooperative project. Allow the children to provide some direction as to their interest as individuals and in group situations
Materials
Some of the materials the child has used during previous stages of development can seem “babyish” to the gang-age child. The child now has greater control over the art materials so will prefer a variety of materials which will enable him to become familiar with new ways to combine materials. If the child has experience in the use of basic art materials, then he will find new ways to express his ideas and show his mastery of the medium. Respect for the child’s personal expression is very important at this stage, for art can be a valuable medium for the child to express how he feels about himself, and his environment.
Now the child is ready to put his thoughts and ideas, feelings and reactions into a visual expressive form. Craftwork can lend itself to this child’s need to explore new materials and fulfill their desires to make things. Care should be taken when choosing craft materials for a children’s art program. Many craft projects are “busy work” which require little creativity and are not fulfilling the child’s need to “do their own thing.” A selection of wood, papier-mache, cloth, buttons, lace, cardboard, boxes; straws, colored paper, etc. can be saved and made available to the children.
The ability to break away from the schema and to recognize particular details connected with the self and with the environment is one of the characteristics of this age. Children between ages 9-11 are more observant of their environment and their interest in nature can be seen in their collection of things. They see things through their own experiences and assume this reality is the way things really are. We can see that naturalism is not the ultimate goal of this age, because there is usually no attempt to show natural colours, light effects, folds of cloth etc. There should be
no value judgment placed on a child’s artwork. At this age, the child and his peers pass on plenty of value judgments about one another’s work. An adult only needs to recognize the sincerity vested in the work.
The Pseudo-Naturalistic Stage
The Stage of Reasoning. 11-13 Years
The pseudo-naturalistic stage of development is very different than any of the previous stages. Because we are mainly concerned with elementary art development we will briefly cover this stage.
- A crucial age for arts education integration as it is during these years that most children cease to be significantly involved in making art. -students are increasingly critical of their drawings
- Students become aware of the quantities of their own art products and if their drawings and paintings appear ‘childlike’ to them, they become self-conscious and dissatisfied with their results and tend to produce less or quit all together.
- They strive to create “adult-like” naturalistic drawings
- Loads of frustration at getting things right
- Proper teaching of learning to see methods will aid in their success. Our role as art teachers changes here. Students become more receptive to instruction, principles and elements of design are more easily understood, technical skills in sculpture, printmaking, etc. are desired. The students want to know how artists handle the problems they are facing as they seek to represent space and depth in their works.
- Students are self-motivated to become skilled in making art that passes their own critical judgement and is very open to learning the skills and techniques they need to create work like past and contemporary artists.
- Students become very interested in advocacy at this age. Social, political and personal influences become the subject matter of their artwork and they respond to the world around them through creating works that generate this discussion. At this age, art education is essential to their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical well-being.
This is the period of a child’s development termed, preadolescent. It is a time for seeking greater independence from adults. There is more awareness than ever of the human figure and the differences between boys and girls. A preadolescent is no longer a child but not yet an adult, thus the term child no longer applies. There is more interest in following the “crowd” and establishing his place in society. The preadolescent also has developed a strong sense of social awareness and the beginnings of a half-understood and not entirely welcome change in status.
During this stage, for the first time, the attention has to be shifted from the importance of the working process to an increased emphasis on the final product. The final product becomes more significant with increasing age. The pre-adolescent has a critical awareness toward their imaginative activity; many times they lose their spontaneous creative ability. An active, stimulating art program is necessary to keep students involved in the creative process.
The human figure takes on a predominant role in the preadolescent’s artwork. A motivating, rewarding art lesson is live model drawing. Students can take turns being the model, thus feeling a sense of cooperation and togetherness with classmates. Murals are excellent for working in groups and learning appreciation for the skills and ideas of others.
Motivation
Any art motivation should stress the individual’s own contribution. At this stage of development it is important to reinforce individualistic thinking. An art program that is primarily concerned with productions may miss entirely one of the basic reasons for the existence of art in a school program, that is, the personal involvement of an individual and the opportunity for a depth of self-expression.
Materials
All of the materials, which the child has used during each stage of development, are appropriate at this stage. The difference is that now the way the child uses the materials will change. Technical proficiency has improved enough that the child will find new ways to use these materials. More sophisticated materials can now be introduced such as watercolours, oil paints, drafting supplies and rulers.
The Development of Two Creative Types
Something very interesting occurs during the creative process that researchers don’t yet fully understand. These are the different ways in which humans create. Especially during childhood, one can observe the approach that a child takes when designing a picture or three-dimensional object. Some children will produce rather naturalistic objects while others will tend towards a more abstract depiction. These two approaches are termed “visual”, and “haptic”.
When we investigate the artistic products of these two types in their pure forms we find that the “visual type ” starts from her environment, that she feels like a spectator, and that her intermediaries for expedience are mainly the eyes. The “haptic type”, is primarily concerned with her own body sensation and the subjective experiences in which she feels emotionally involved.
A visually minded person would be disturbed and inhibited if he were to be stimulated only by means of haptic impressions, that is, if he were asked not to use sight but to orient himself only by means of touch, bodily feelings, muscular activities and kinesthetic fusions. This much is clear from research, but what is not obvious is that “seeing” may also become an inhibitory factor when forced upon an individual who does not use his visual experiences for creative work.
Most people tend to fall between these two extreme types. Investigations have shown only a few individuals have equal amounts of visual and haptic predisposition. Seventy-five percent of people have an appreciable tendency toward one or the other. What this tells us is that a child with a visual type tendency will not benefit from a lesson that is purely kinesthetic, and a child with a haptic type tendency will not benefit from a purely visual lesson.
Many art educators feel very strongly that there is no place in an art program for colouring books or “copy” lessons. The development and growth of creative thinkers in our society depend upon allowing children to express themselves in a personal manner. There is no feeling of satisfaction for a child when he does not know which project is his on the wall because “they all look alike. ” A polished, neat, copy type of art project will only satisfy adults and will make the child feel incapable of creating “good” art. Engage the children in their own self-expression and valuable learning will be discovered in the classroom. We can plan art lessons to stimulate all of the child’s creative potential through sight, sounds, movement, feelings, and personal experiences.
Why this is important for our students: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/heres-what-future-haptic-technology-looks-or-rather-feels-180971097/
References:
These stages are taken from Bob Steel’s Draw Me a Story: An Illustrated Exploration of Drawing-as-Language, ©1997.
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