Cultural differences in Chinese American and European American children's drawing skills over time

Parents and early childhood teachers in Chinese societies and the United States have had dissimilar views about appropriate art instruction for young children. The Chinese view is that creativity will emerge after children have been taught essential drawing skills. The American view has been that children's drawing skills emerge naturally and that directive teaching will stifle children's creativity. Forty second-generation Chinese American and 40 European American young children participated in this longitudinal study at ages 5, 7, and 9 to explore possible cultural differences in and antecedents of their drawing skills and creativity. Chinese American children's person drawings were more mature and creative and their parents reported more formal ways of fostering creativity as compared to their European American counterparts. Correlations showed that children who had more opportunities to draw and who received more guidance in drawing were more advanced in their drawing. For Chinese Americans, fathers’ personal art attitudes and children's Time 1 drawing skills predicted 53% of the variance in children's drawing scores four years later.     

Drawing for others: influence of referential intention in early production of drawings / Dibujar para otros: influencia de la intencionalidad referencial en la producción temprana de dibujos

This study examines if and how the presence of an adult as a receptive agent of children’s drawings has an effect on the early production of pictorial symbols by emphasizing the children’s referential intention as drawers. To this end, we compared three-year-old children’s representational drawings with a model in four experimental conditions, three conditions with an adult as a receptive agent and one condition without a receiver. In the conditions with a receiver (Linguistic Feedback, Graphic Demonstration and Graphic Product) children were explicitly asked to draw for an adult, who had to use the children’s pictures to find hidden objects in identical boxes; the conditions differed in the adult’s actions with non-representational drawings. The results indicate that the presence of the receiver had an impact on representational production only when the adult demonstrated how to create the drawings with the intent of communicating the identity of the objects (Graphic Demonstration). Although drawing is typically viewed as a solitary activity, these results suggest that representational drawings may emerge in communicative contexts between drawers and receivers.     

Drawing Boundary Conditions for Learning by Drawing

Learning by drawing can be an effective strategy for supporting science text comprehension. However, drawing can also be cognitively demanding and time consuming, and students may not create quality drawings without sufficient guidance. Furthermore, evidence for drawing is often based on comparisons to weak control conditions, such as students who only read the text without provided illustrations. In this review, we synthesize past research to help draw boundary conditions for learning by drawing, focusing on the role of comparison conditions and drawing guidance. First, we analyze how drawing compares to each of four control conditions: reading only, text-focused strategies (e.g., summarizing), other model-focused strategies (e.g., imagining), or viewing instructor-provided illustrations. Next, we distinguish among four levels of drawing guidance: minimal guidance, drawing training, partially provided illustrations, and comparison to instructor-provided illustrations. Our findings indicate that when compared to only reading the text or using text-focused strategies, creating drawings is consistently more effective at fostering comprehension and transfer, regardless of the level of drawing guidance provided. However, when compared to other model-focused strategies or to viewing instructor-provided illustrations, effects of creating drawings are mixed and may depend on the level of drawing guidance provided, among other factors. We discuss the theoretical and practical considerations of our findings and suggest several directions for broadening research on drawing.     

How do children who understand mixed emotion represent them in freehand drawings of themselves and others?

This research is the first to assess children’s representation of mixed emotion using a freehand drawing task. Two hundred and forty-one 5–11-year olds completed a drawing and a colour preference task. Children heard a condition appropriate vignette about themselves or a protagonist designed to evoke mixed emotion, and were asked to draw the self or the protagonist experiencing neutral, happy and sad affect. Children who reported mixed emotions after the story also drew themselves or the protagonist experiencing mixed emotion. For mixed emotion, children used red, green and blue more in drawings of the protagonist, and yellow more in drawings of the self. Interestingly, strategies for mixed emotion drawings were similar to those used for happy drawings; more specifically, in drawings of the self, children were particularly more likely to use smiles (for happy and sad drawings) and fewer frowns. Findings are discussed in relation to self-presentational behaviour.     

The Original Creative Principle

The following imaginary interview is linked to an hour long drawing workshop carried out during the 2002 NSEAD Annual Conference ‘Creativity in Art & Design Education’. The intention was to get closer to the experience by raising questions. I hope those who participated may recognise it as, in some way, connected to their experience. The American Artist, Robert Motherwell maintained an interest in psychic automatism throughout his life. Although he remained suspicious of its mystical connotations [1] fundamental principles appeared to inform his working methods. Motherwell identified a number of key issues which serve to define its potential in the origination and development of paintings and drawings. He saw the process as “...very little a question of the unconscious, but much more a plastic weapon with which to invent new forms.”[2] Motherwell’s analysis and, to some extent defence, of the process is as follows: 1. It cuts through any a priori influences — it is not a style 2. It is entirely personal 3. It is, by definition, original 4. It can be modified stylistically and in subject matter at any point during the process. The proposed drawing workshop seeks to explore Motherwell’s approach and by definition, exposes a related and learning and teaching strategy. The process serves as a catalyst for creative thinking, exploiting analogy, simile and metaphor in the generation of artistic and personally defined contexts or narratives.     

The Young Child's Pictorial Representation of the Human Figure

This study investigated reasons for the omission of the torso typical in most young children's drawings of the human figure. Do they have an incomplete mental image of the human figure; if so will the torso be omitted from a manikin task too? As the head is normally drawn first, is the torso simply forgotten; if so will children include it if they are asked to draw the torso first? Eighty tadpole‐drawers (aged between 2 years 7 months and 5 years) were randomly allocated to a drawing or a manikin condition; they were further subdivided into a head‐first or torso‐first condition. Significantly more children produced a conventional figure when they constructed a manikin compared with those who were asked to draw; the order of body parts (head‐first vs torso‐first) had no significant effect. These results suggest that young children omit the torso from their human figures because they have yet to devise a way of drawing it, perhaps because it is a relatively unimportant item; there is little evidence that they have simply forgotten it or that their mental model for the human figure is incomplete.     

Human Figure Drawings by Schooled and Unschooled Children in Papua New Guinea

Human figure drawings were collected from 287 schooled and unschooled children, aged between 10 and 15 years, living in a remote region of the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, an area with no tradition of graphic art. A classification and ordinal scoring system was devised which encompassed graphic productions ranging from scribbles to conventional competent human figure drawings. The effects of school experience on drawing, even brief and indirect experience, were found to be significant. All the children attending school drew only conventional human figures, but the whole range of drawings, scribbles, transitional forms, and conventional human figure drawings were found in the unschooled children's attempts. Nonrepresentational scribbles and shapes were largely produced by unschooled children living in remote villages without a school, trade store, or mission. Some children appeared to be able to draw representations of the human figure without going through a scribbling stage. The material is considered in relation to other reports on drawings produced by children from societies with little or no indigenous graphic art. The results are discussed in relation to various theories on the development of drawing and representational abilities.     

Children's creative potential: An empirical study of measurement issues

Relations between measures of creative potential and different scoring methods were examined in 154 French schoolchildren. The Test for Creative Thinking — Drawing Production (TCT-DP), parallel lines task from the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking, and an object-based creative drawing task were used. Factor analysis of TCT-DP subscores showed an originality factor and an appropriateness factor. The relations between these factors, judge's creativity ratings of the same drawings, and statistical originality scores based on the frequency of elements in the drawings were tested by means of a LISREL model. Moreover, TCT-DP scores correlated positively but weakly with performance in the parallel lines task and the object-based drawing task.     

Action,Autobiography and Aesthetics in Young Children’s Self-Initiated Drawings

Lark-Horovitz, Lewis, and Luca [1973] described the emergence of ‘subject matter specialists,’ children who create series of self-initiated or voluntary drawings featuring consistent themes, characters, or settings that seem particularly compelling to them. A decade-long study of the images preschool and kindergarten children create when invited to draw in their own sketchbooks in the context of a weekly art class suggests that the choice of what to draw shapes the process of learning how to draw in decisive ways. The interests young children develop and pursue in drawing and in other forms of symbolic play are influenced by gender and by culture, by personality and circumstance. The choices children make inevitably open certain possibilities and foreclose others, shaping early artistic learning in decisive ways. Many early childhood educators [e.g., Katz, 1993] maintain that young children’s learning should be firmly grounded in first-hand experience. However, children whose drawings are autobiographical in content may be less consistent in choosing topics for drawing and prone to pass the time between significant images by drawing designs and symbols which seem less personally meaningful and engaging. Children who draw upon imaginative themes seem to have an inexhaustible source of inspiration ready at hand when they begin to draw. According to Egan [1988], the fictional or mythic nature of these representations may serve young children’s quest to make sense of their experiences in ways that explorations of the everyday do not.     

漫话丰子恺先生的"漫画"

丰子恺的艺术生涯是从漫画开始的,丰子恺一生绘画题材广泛,而篇幅较小,用笔简练,着色简单,成稿较快,所以数量较多,流传甚广。丰子恺在《漫画创作二十年》一文中,曾将他的绘画分为四个时期:第一是描写古诗句时代;第二是描写儿童相时代;第三是描写社会相时代;第四是描写自然相时代。但又交互错综,不能断然划界。丰子恺先生独具慧眼地审视一切,善于从平凡琐屑的事中画出耐人寻味的人生意味,他充分发挥了漫画随意、轻松、活泼的特长,一任身边的琐事,日常的见闻,片断的思想率然地、杂然地流露,自成一种率真自然,平中见奇的风格。丰子恺先生的漫画,作为绘画界的一株奇葩,以其独特的韵味,小中见大的深刻内涵,永远存活在中华民族艺术的百花园中!     

培养学生画图和读图能力的教学改革初探

近年来,学生画图和读图能力有所下降,对此,必须通过深化课程教学改革,建立新的教学内容体系,强化实践性教学环节,培养学生的图形思维能力,才能有效地提高学生画图和读图的能力。     

Drawing Development: From Similarity of Features to Direction

Children often are said to pass through a series of stages in learning to represent 3-dimensional objects, such as cubes, on a 2-dimensional picture surface. Drawings of cubes from 1,734 children and adults were collected. They were classified into 10 drawing types (5 distinguished by Willats, and some additional types, one taken from Caron-Pargue). Over 80% of 5-year-olds produced a single square to represent a cube. Also, over 80% of 14- and 15-year-olds and over 80% of adults produced a parallel-projection drawing. However, there are several routes between these two milestones of drawing development, since no other drawing type captured more than 23% of the drawings at any age between 6 and 13. It is instructive that some children produced drawings that never were made by any of the adults, while some adults produced drawings of cubes that young children did not. We suggest that these differences between children and adults show that the younger children use a similarity geometry with "feature-based" criteria, while the older children and adults use a vantage-point geometry that includes "direction-based" criteria.     

Signs,symbols and schemas: understanding meaning in a child’s drawings

This paper examines the schematic underpinnings in the drawings of a four-year-old girl, Thea. The paper reviews literature on graphic representations, signs and meaning-making before discussing schematic form in children’s drawings, the theoretical background for the study. The paper discusses ethical issues and methodological approaches to the study where data include drawings made at home and school, Thea’s recorded talk about drawings, and video recordings of her drawing sessions over a four-month period. These were coded manually and using NVivo to identify schemas. The paper discusses examples of Thea’s exploration of enclosure and trajectory schematic form, which are represented by rich content derived from her experiences and imagination. The paper concludes that Thea’s drawings included many schematic signifiers with clear evidence of complex thinking around enclosures and of vertical and horizontal trajectories. The paper evidences the importance of listening to children’s talk as they draw in order to understand more fully, the meanings they are making. Through signs, symbols and personal narratives, Thea used drawing as a meaningful semiotic space where her persistent schematic concerns were manifest.     

先天盲人人物绘画训练的个案研究

为探索先天盲人平面绘画特征及促进其人物画细节表现的美术教育方法,研究者以一名先天盲人为个案,通过作品分析发现：没有平面绘画经验的先天盲人能创作出可识别的人物画作品;先天盲人在二维平面内表现三维人物时存在困难,这种困难可能由缺乏平面绘画经验造成;使用有触觉反馈的绘画工具,提供一定社会文化刺激后,上述状况能够得到显著改善.     

Comparaisons de dessins d’objets en perspective cavalière avec un dessin modèle ou avec un objet reél

This project tries to deal with all the difficulties adults of a low educational level are liable to cope with when they reed perspective drawings of an object, the real object being there or not. The subjects have to compare perspective drawings with a “model drawing” or a “model object”. The results show the difficulties of both exercices are related to people’s space conceptualisation: reading spatial depth relationships in drawings, coordination view-points, mental rotation. These observations gives us the possibility to give some didactic suggestions.     

Memorisation methods in science education: tactics to improve the teaching and learning practice

How can science teachers support students in developing an appropriate declarative knowledge base for solving problems? This article focuses on the question whether the development of students’ memory of scientific propositions is better served by writing propositions down on paper or by making drawings of propositions either by silent or muttering rehearsal. By means of a memorisation experiment with eighth- and ninth-grade students, we answer this question. In this experiment, students received instruction to memorise nine science propositions and to reproduce them afterwards. To support memorisation students were randomly assigned either to a group that received instruction to write each proposition on paper or to a group that received instruction to make a drawing about the content of the proposition. In addition, half of the students in both groups received instruction to mutter and the other half of them received instruction to write or draw in silence. The main conclusion from the experiment is that after four weeks students who had made a drawing remembered significantly more propositions than those who had memorised the propositions by writing them down. Our research further revealed that it did not matter whether students muttered or memorised silently.     

Drawing with Children: An Experiment in Assisted Creativity

This report outlines the cognitive accomplishments of young children involved in graphic dialogue with adults. A token of collaborative drawing is examined exhibiting the degree to which adult informed tutoring enabled children in their drawing development, enhanced their motivation and ability in narration and resulted in drawings meaningful to them. The case studies examined are the result of a three‐year research project conducted by undergraduate students of Athens University Department of Early Childhood Education under the supervision of the author of this article. This game‐like pedagogical strategy is inspired by L. Vygotsky's educational philosophy and based on B. & M. Wilson's model of adult–child graphic dialogue. It is understood as a method of instructing drawing enabling children to pass from that which they can achieve alone to that which they can accomplish with adult assistance. This educational approach answers to a call for a more socially accountable art education addressing the child's need to deal with issues he encounters in his everyday life and as such is open to adult and cultural interference. A similar educational approach intends to challenge the long‐standing, non‐interventionist art educational theory also known as ‘child art’ and its contention that a prerequisite for a creative individual is expression free from social and adult influence.     

Young children's encoding of images based on motor and verbal modes of mediation

Twenty-four kindergarten subjects were given practice producing a geometric production when given the three dimensional object. Six children were told how to draw the projections, six children drew the projections, six children drew the projections and were told how to draw the projections, and six children were told to remember the drawings. Using a two-way analysis of variance, the main effect of motor activity (drawing the projections) was significant (p < .05). It was concluded that children's learning activities should be motor based, rather than verbal.     

The effects of different drawing materials on children’s drawings of positive and negative human figures

Children tend to use certain drawing strategies differentially when asked to draw topics with positive and negative emotional characterisations. These effects have however only been established when children are asked to use standard drawing materials. The present study was designed to investigate whether the above pattern of children’s response when drawing characterised figures would alter when children are asked to use different drawing materials. One hundred and thirty‐two children (69 boys and 63 girls) aged between four and 11 years were divided into two conditions and completed two counterbalanced test sessions, rating colour preferences and drawing characterised figures using either stick or block crayons. It was found that some drawing strategies varied in relation to drawing materials and in relation to the precise characterisation employed. The results are discussed in terms of the need for interpretations of emotional information in children’s drawings to take account of the exact materials used.