Running Head: ANALYSIS OF A CHILDS DRAWING 1

Analysis of a Childs Drawing

Kimberlyn Rutledge
University of Missouri, Columbia
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Analysis of a Childs Drawing
A childs drawing often tells a story. A story of how they think, feel and view
the world. As a teacher it is important to examine these drawings to get a better
understanding of the childs conception of the world and also to understand their
growth as well. In the article What every educator should (but maybe doesnt) know
by Erickson and Young, they state that, Childrens abilities to create drawings and
to understand art develop in a parallel fashion to changes in their cognitive,
emotional, social, and physical growth. (41). It is important for all teachers to be
able to analyze the students drawings and artwork to be able to correctly assess
where the child is mentally and physically as well. Luehrman and Unrath (2006)
explain why they believe that preserve elementary teachers and classroom teachers
need some knowledge of the stage theories of child development. They state that by
knowing these theories the teachers can have a place to begin when trying to
understand their students and they are better able to choose age-appropriate
teaching as assessment strategies (p. 67). In this paper I will use this idea of
analyzing to describe a childs drawing and point out several distinctive aspects that
are important to understanding what stage of drawing the child is in. Through using
the methods of analyzing a childs drawing I will also explain how doing this
assignment is useful to me as a future educator and how this method of analyzing is
important as well.


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Methods
These stages of artistic development are primarily defined by Lowenfeldian
stages. Lowenfeld and Brittain (1970) listed the Lowenfeldian Stages of Art as: the
Scribbling Stage (2-4 years), Preschematic Stage (4-7 years), Schematic Stage (7-9
years), Gang Age (9-12 years), Pseudo-Naturalistic Stage (12-14 years), and finally
Adolescent Art (14-17 years) (pp. 474-479). Specific characteristics of each of these
stages involve the drawing, space representation, and human figure representation
the child uses. These stages are used as a guiding point to help assess the age and
development of the child.
In class we were given a childs drawing to analysis and discuss with a
partner what stage we thought the child was in. By using the tools and tips given to
us in some of the articles we had previously read for class, my partner and I were
able to correctly assess the age and stage that the child was in. I decided to use
these skills to analyze a picture given to me by a five year old kindergartener named
Carmen, who I work with after school at adventure club. Because I was at work
when she drew me this picture I was able to watch her draw the picture and got to
keep the final product.
Description
The drawing that Carmen gave to me was drawn in marker and it depicts the
picture of me walking my dog next to a tree. Carmen first started with drawing the
tree, which is large, basic, and clearly dominates the picture. She started by drawing
a long skinny brown rectangle and than coloring that in as the tree trunk. She than
added green leaves at the top by drawing a curved circle on top and than coloring
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this in as well. Next she decided she needed to add in a sky and some grass. For the
sky, she colored a blue section at the very top of the paper. Before she finished
coloring it all in she drew a yellow circle and colored it in to represent the sun. She
did this before coloring in the blue because she told me she did not want the colors
to mix and make a green sun instead. Than at the bottom she colored green section
around the trunk of the tree to represent the grass my dog and I were going to be
walking on. In between the grass and the sky though she left the background white
to represent the air between the two.
Next Carmen started drawing my dog and I in the picture. She started with
my body first. She drew what looked like a oversized turtleneck with a rounded top.
She than added a square on the bottom and split that in half for my legs, than
colored in my shirt green and my pants red. In the end my body was one large blob,
with no hair, no arms, a basic smiling face looking at the viewer, and no feet. My
body is mis-proportioned and about the same size of the tree. For my dog she drew
a long oval shape with head and a tail. Than she added two stick legs, two round
ears, some spots and a nose. She than added a thin line from my stub of an arm to
the dog as the leash. Finally to top off the picture she drew a heart and a bumblebee
in the middle of the picture. Than she declared that she was done and went off to
play with another toy. In Figure 1 you can see what Carmens picture turned out to
look like.
Findings
In analyzing this drawing I came to the conclusion that Carmen was toward
the end of the pre-schematic stage or the beginning of the schematic stage of
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drawing according the Lowenfeldian stages. Carmen had distorted the size of the
tree and my body which is an aspect of pre-schematic shape representation
according to the article which states the size of objects is not proportion to one
another. (p. 475) However Carmen also had little overlapping in her objects and
had a two dimensional organization of objects which is an aspect of schematic space
representation. Another aspect of schematic space representation evident in
Carmens drawing is that there is a Establishment of a base line on which objects
are place and often a sky line, with space between representing the air. (p. 476)
Carmen clearly demonstrates this aspect in her drawing with the sky and than the
blank space between that and the grass line that the characters are standing on.
Overall Carmen fell equally between the pre-schematic and schematic stage, which
is interesting considering her age does not match these results.
Conclusion
I know Carmen pretty well, I see her everyday at work, and she makes sure to
remind me almost constantly that she is a big girl now because she is 5. However
Carmens drawing is more at the stage of a 7 or 8 year old. At first I found this
interesting but then I realized that this is just another reason why educators should
be able to analyze childrens stages of drawing. Kellog states in his article Analyzing
childrens art that not all of the evolutionary steps appear in the work of every child
(p45). In Erickson and Youngs article What every educator should (but maybe
doesnt) Know they also talk about how some children end up in different stages of
Lowenfeidian scale than what the norm is (p. 41). This is because children progress
in their artwork the same way they progress in reading and math. We should expect
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it to be natural to have a wide variety of student ability in reading and math and
should also expect this in their artistic talents as well.
Going through the process of analyzing Carmens drawing I also realized that
in order for us to correctly assess the development patterns of our students we must
also be able to assess the development of their artwork as well. In doing so we can
see how they are developing mentally and emotionally by viewing their drawings as
snapshots of the childs world. Margaret Johnson states in her article that Just as
children learn to read and write by constructing and decoding words, they learn to
create and decode visual symbols and ideas (Kellogg, R, p. 74) I believe that math,
reading, writing, and other subjects are important to a childs development but I
also believe that art is a subject that should be carefully nurtured in a child as well.

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References
Erickson, M., & Young, B. (1996). What every educator should (but maybe doesnt)
know. School Arts, 96 (2), 40-42.
Johnson, M. H. (2008). Developing verbal and visual literacy through experiences in
the visual arts. Young Children, 63 (1), 74-79.
Kellogg, R. (1970). Analyzing childrens art. Palo Alto, CA: National.
Lowenfeld, V., & Brittain, W. L. (1970). Creative and mental growth. New York:
Macmillan.
Luehrman, M., & Unrath, K. (2006). Making theories of childrens artistic
development meaningful for pre-service teachers. Art Education, 59 (3), 6-12.

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Figure 1: Carmens drawing