Monica Shih, 1 Child A:

Monica Shih, 2 Child B:

Monica Shih, 3 Child C:

Monica Shih, 4 Childrens Drawing Development Paper When asking my children at the CDL to draw self-portraits, I did not have much cooperation from them. At the preschool where I work, I asked a group of the four-year-olds to draw me some self-portraits, which I then had lots of artwork to choose from! After Child A drew her self-portrait and wrote her name on the front (which I covered up with blue sticky notes), I then asked the rest of the students not to write their names. Many students were very willing to draw for me, and did so at the art center during choice time (also known as centers). While Child B and Child C are very interested in art, Child A is not as engaged. Child C even makes books by gluing paper together and folding it in half! She creates illustrations on each page, and tells creative sequenced stories, often changing small details each time she rereads her book. I thought this was very telling of Vygotskys (1978) claim that childrens drawings figure prominently in the prehistory of writing (Thompson, 1995, p. 7-8). This is definitely a great process for Child C who is clearly ready to start writing down her stories and ideas! All three children are four-year-old girls entering kindergarten next year. It should be noted that Child C is the oldest of the entire class. Examining Child As artwork first, I immediately notice several things. First, that she wrote her name even though I did not ask her to. Second, her self-portrait is tiny in comparison to the entire paper she was offered. Third, her self-portrait was very simple, and she did not take as much time as the other two children did. I would place Child A in the preschematic stage of drawing, which typically include children ages four to seven (Brittain & Lowenfeld, 1970). Child A is in the

Monica Shih, 5 preschematic stage because she uses geometric shapes such as a circle and triangle for her head and body, she seems to float around the page with no baseline, and there is a lot of space surrounding the child (Brittain & Lowenfeld, 1970). Her figure does not have very many details on it, however she does have a few polka dots on her dress. Her figure lacks details such as hair, other fingers and toes, and her nose or mouth is obscure. It is interesting, however, that she uses two different colors for her figure. Blue for her arms and legs, and red for her dress and head. After she was done, I asked her to tell me about her artwork, and she told me that she was standing really still while daddy was taking her picture with a camera. Thinking that she might have included fingers and toes in her work, I pointed asked her what the lines were, and she said they were just hands and feet. Based off of her comments, and using the information from the Baltimore Countys Board of Education (1974), I would encourage to Child A to name the parts for closer observation. I would also encourage her to think of other parts of her body to include in her artwork. I would suggest that she looks into the mirror to examine herself, and add more details. I would not directly tell her what to include (such as hair, or more fingers, etc) but gently encourage her to think of what else she could include in her self-portrait. To move her away from stick figures, I would ask her to think about how her arm looks, or what shape her body and arms are to help her move away from the triangle body. Lastly, I would encourage her to use more space in her artwork and point out all the white space around her figure. Despite these suggestions, Child A is very typical for her age and stage.

Monica Shih, 6 Child B has also drawn her figure very simply, using geometric shapes for her head (circle) and body (triangle), but has added more detail than Child A. Child B draws herself next to her house, although I did not ask her why she chose to do so. I think that Child B is clearly in the preschematic stage as defined by Brittain & Lowenfeld (1970). She uses geometrical shapes for her body and her house, the placement of her body and house are determined subjectively, objects seem to float on the page, lots of space surrounds the child, she is smiling and looking at the viewer, and she has included hands and feet or shoes, but not details of fingers or toes. She is also the only one out of the three that has clearly included a nose. While Child A used stick figures to represent hands and feet, Child B uses circles for hands and feet. Child B like Child A has a triangle body, and has polka dots, much like Child A. Child B uses one color for her entire body, but two colors for her house. The door on the house is floating and does not meet the baseline of the house. The doorknob is centered on the door instead of to the left. She knows to draw a rectangle for the house, but the door seems to represent doors in fairytales with a curved top instead of a rectangular-shaped door. The entire picture does not have a baseline, and she even ran out of room while drawing the roof because her house does not meet a baseline and is floating in the center of the page. Her person is also disproportionate in comparison to the house. All of these characteristics place her in the preschematic stage. According to the Baltimore County Board of Education (1974), Child B uses embellishing symbols and uses some space around her person. Some suggestions based off of these characteristics that I would make to Child B would be for her to

Monica Shih, 7 look into a mirror and see what color her eyes or hair is, what shape her body looks like, and so on to help her add more details to her person. We could talk about proportion so she could see the size of her person in comparison to the house, and even discuss having a base to draw from. I would give Child B many of the same suggestions as Child A. These suggestions are only to get her thinking, and are by no means expectations to have for a typical child her age. Child Cs drawing clearly has the most detail in it. Giving all students the same instructions to draw a picture of themselves, it does not surprise me that Child C went beyond, and added more details. Thompson (1995) says that, Children freely appropriate images they admire and ideas they fancy (p. 8). This is true of Child C, who I know is very interested in jewelry, make-up, high heels, beauty, princesses, and fairy tales. As can be seen in her picture, and from what she explained to me, she is holding hands with her best friend, and next to them are a rainbow and the castle that they live in. Above them is a sky with the sun, although the sky is only represented by a line and not colored in. Child C drew her and her friend with hair, eyes, mouth, neck, necklaces, and dresses. Child C then drew more details for herself, having a blue trim at her wrists, having five fingers on each hand with the nails painted pink, high heels for shoes, and even a jeweled tiara on top of her head. I would definitely place Child C between the preschematic and schematic stage according to the information from Brittain & Lowenfeld (1970). Child Cs drawing is still preschematic because the size of people and objects are determined subjectively, the size of objects are not proportional to the people, people are

Monica Shih, 8 smiling at the viewer, there is some inclusion or omission of body, yet there are other details such as clothing and hair (Brittain & Lowenfeld, 1970). However, I also think she fits the schematic stage because the human figures have volume, the drawing shows concept instead of percept, and I feel that the proportions reflect her emotional values (Brittain & Lowenfeld, 1970). Wilson & Wilson (1982) expand on how proportions reflect childrens emotional values when talking about the plastic principle (p. 47) which they describe as childrens exaggeration of objects, persons, and actions in their artwork that are most important. I think that Child C demonstrates this principle because she drew her person larger than her friends, and with greater detail (although she gave her friend blue eyes). Her self-portrait includes fingers, nail polish, shoes, and a tiara, while her friend does not. Even Child Cs dress is more elaborate than her friends, with the trim around the wrists. Child C is clearly portraying herself as the dominant figure in the picture. Based off of my observations and what Child C has told me, Baltimore Countys Board of Education (1974) suggests that for students who are using the space around objects like Child C is, to have the child experiment with repeated patterns and simple printmaking activities, such as creating borders and backgrounds. The Baltimore County Board of Education (1974) also suggests that for a child who relates two symbols like Child C related herself as a princess next to a castle and the rainbow below the sky, to encourage the child to become aware of spatial relationships between objects and persons. Using these suggestions, I would ask Child C what else she could include in the background. If she included the sky,

Monica Shih, 9 then she could also include the grass and some flowers, which would give her a baseline. Like Child B, Child C drew the door to her castle floating off of the ground instead of at the baseline of the castle. I would also talk to her about spatial relationships to help her think about the size of the people in comparison to the castle they supposedly live in. Again, despite my suggestions, I think she does a great job of using the space of the paper and including lots of details in her person! It is very interesting that when asking the students to draw a picture of themselves, none of my three students thought of themselves or represented themselves alone. Child A told me she was standing by herself while daddy was taking a picture with a camera. Child B drew herself next to her house (implying a closeness with family), and Child C drew herself holding hands with her best friend. I find it interesting that none of the children restricted themselves to drawing a lone figure, except for Child A. However even Child A did not perceive herself alone by any means, explaining that her lone figure was because daddy was taking a picture of her with a camera. I feel that these drawings, and childrens artwork in general, are very social, and are telling to the childrens social development not to mention the great creative outlet it provides for the students! Looking at these three pieces of artwork, it was very interesting to me to see how much differentiation there is between three four-year-olds, and how much their drawings impact my perception about their image of themselves and others. From these drawings, I feel that as a future educator, there are many aspects of development that I could pull from childrens artwork, including cognitive (geometrical shapes, perceptions, stick figures or volume), social (friends, family,

Monica Shih, 10 objects, values), creative (amount of details, explanations of artwork, artistic choices), physical (control of strokes, coloring-in of figures, patience for the task at hand), and so much more! To summarize, Luehrman & Unrath (2006) say that, Stage theory concepts should not be rigidly interpreted, but rather flexibly referenced as a general guide (p. 8). Therefore, we as educators should not shove each child into a category or stage of development, but rather, treat each child as an individual, using stage theories as a guiding diagnostic framework to reference.

Monica Shih, 11 References Board of Education of Baltimore County. (1974). Art Experience Develop Visual Perception, 6-9. Brittain, W. L. & Lowenfeld, V. (1970). Creative and Mental Growth. New York, NY: MacMillan Company, 474-479. Luehrman, M., & Unrath, K. (2006). Making Theories of Childrens Artistic Development Meaningful for Pre-Service Teachers. Art Education, 59(3), 612. Thompson, C. M. (1995). What should I draw today? Art Education, 48(5), 6-11. Wilson, M., & Wilson, B. (1982). Teaching Children to Draw. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 39-47.