A Childs Drawing Analysis

A Childs Drawing Analysis

Montana Adams
University of Missouri Columbia

A Childs Drawing Analysis

A Childs Drawing Analysis

Art and art integration is so important to keep in todays
classrooms. Art can teach people who are concerned with the
improvement of school many things. Education can learn from the
arts that slowing down perception is the most promising way to see
what is actually there. (Eisner, 2009, pg. 8) Children so often
associate being smart with being fast. For example, when a student is
the last one to finish a test they so often feel like they are dumb and
that everyone around them understands things better. Teaching kids
that taking their time and really trying to digest something are really
important and beneficial. Dewey argued, and I endorse his argument,
that learning how to slow down can enrich ones experience. (Eisner,
2009, pg.8) When doing art projects, many students are encouraged
not to rush because rushing will sometimes not capture the full effect a
student may be going for. This same idea can be taken into the
classroom because by rushing through assignments and readings
students are not able to fully learn the information that they were
intended to.
Art integration is something that is so often over looked and
underestimated. Many schools are starting to focus more on main core
subjects, such as math and science, when art is something that should
not be forgotten. Arts integration provides multiple ways for students
to make sense of what they learn (construct understanding) and make

A Childs Drawing Analysis

their learning visible (demonstrate understanding). (Silverstein and

Layne, 2010) Art helps students to be creative, understand new
information and to make connections. Creativity is something that
students should not be deprived of in their childhood because it is so
important for them to create their on way of understanding and not
have it forced upon them in a way that they cannot process. A childs
artwork and drawings explains so much more than just meets the eye.
Recognizing students artistic development and being able to
understand the different stages is so important. Brittain and Lowenfeld
came up with the 4 different stags of development and it consisted of:
stage one which is The Scribbling stage; stage 2, which is The PreSchematic stage; stage 3, which is The Schematic stage; and then
stage 4, which is The Gang Stage. All of these stages describe how
students drawing characteristics are expected to be at each age for all
the stages. Each of these stages says something about our students.
Childrens abilities to create drwaings and to understand art develop
in a parallel fashion to changes in their cognitive, emotional, social,
and physical growth. (Erikson and Young, 1996, pg. 41) This shows
that when we pay attention to students art abilities it will also help us
in understanding their growth as a person..
Description and Analysis
For my childs drawing, I chose to have my niece Remi, who is
three years old, draw for me. She is super sassy, random, and enjoys

A Childs Drawing Analysis

being coloring pictures of things that are not normally drawn by typical
children. I started by just asking her to draw me a picture of whatever
she wanted. At first, she said she had no idea what to draw. I told her
she could choose to draw an animal, a house, picture of her favorite
movie character, or anything that she thought would be cool. She told
me she wanted to draw an eyeball. I thought this was really interesting
because what 3 year old girl wants to draw a picture of just an eyeball.
So, after she drew the eyeballs I asked her a variety of questions that
revolved around where they came from and why she wanted to draw
them. Some of the questions I asked were are these eyeballs floating
in the air? or are these eyeballs on a person or animal? She
answered me, not by words at first, but by just beginning to draw an
animal and then explaining what it was. She never said what kind of
animal, just that it was an animal. I tried not to ask too many questions
because I didnt want to interrupt her train of thought or make her
think that she should change her drawing. I wanted her to be free to
use her imagination and creativity to do what she wanted and I wanted
her to tell me about her picture when she wanted on her own.
The drawing Remi did was of a crazy animal as she called it.
She started with a blue crayon and drew two different sized circles.
One shape was more like a small oval and the other one was a circle
about twice the size of the oval. Then she moved on to drawing the
body. The body started out with the same blue crayon and its shape

A Childs Drawing Analysis

was kind of like a box. After she finished drawing the box body, she
started to just scribble on the page and say, This animal is crazy!
She started the scribbles over the body with a blue crayon and then
moved on to using a red, yellow and orange crayon. After she got done
using individual crayons to do those first 4 colors, she decided to grab
a handful of crayons and color on the page. After there were scribbles
everywhere, and the eyeballs that had been drawn first were hard to
see, she finally said she was done. The final drawing was what I would
think of as a beginning
childs drawing.
I asked Remi to tell me
about why she drew the
animal the way she did. She
told me that the reason why
she had scribbles
everywhere on his body was
because he was a crazy
animal. Remi giggled and said, Her hair is like sticking up because
shes so wild. I asked her, why are the eyes different shapes and
sizes? and she explained to me, Tana, I didnt mean for them to be
different, I just accidentally did that.
Conclusion

A Childs Drawing Analysis

After observing Remis drawing I came to the conclusion that she

is in between the named scribbling stage and the pre-schematic stage.
She began her drawing with a shape of an animal that had a body and
eyes, but then she ended her drawing by scribbling over the top to
make it look crazy. The result of this is that by the end the picture just
looks like a lot of scribbles. On her picture, she describes many of the
scribbles as legs and then different parts of the animals body, and
although her eyes are basically colored over, she still knows where
they are and tells you that they are the animals eyes. After she got
done telling me about the picture I asked her if the animal was any
animal in particular. She ended up telling me that it was Bella, which is
my dogs name. Bella always gets super jealous when Remi is at our
house and Bella goes nuts. Remi does not like Bella, so that is most
likely why she called it a crazy animal. This relates to the preschematic stage because during that stage kids start making drawings
that represent objects, people or animals that are present in their life.
Drawing with Remi has shown me that it is so important to be
aware of all your students abilities and to not hold all of your students
to the same standards. Although Remi showed some aspects of the
pre-schematic stage, the majority of her drawing came from the
scribble stage, which is actually young for her. Although she is 3, she is
about to be 4, and should be starting to draw shapes according to
Lowenfelds theory. This is a reminder that you should not categorize

A Childs Drawing Analysis

your students based on expectations of grade-level abilities. I want to

carry this concept into my future classroom and be sure to not
categorize my students based on their grade level expectations. I want
to be sure to tend to all my students needs and not leave some of
them in the dust because they arent on level or because I simply
havent paid enough attention to how they are progressing in class. I
hope to one day help my students creativity shine and allow them to
learn in a way that best helps them.

References
Erickson,M.,&Young,B.(1996).Whateveryeducatorshould(butmaybe
doesnt)know.SchoolArts,96(2)4042
Layne,L.B.(2010).DefiningArtsIntegration.TheJohnF.KennedyCenterforthe

A Childs Drawing Analysis

PerformingArts,110.
Eisner,E.(2009).WhatEducationCanLearnfromtheArts.2008NAEANational
Convention(pp.69).NewOrleans:TheLowenfeldLecture.