Childhood Education

ISSN: 0009-4056 (Print) 2162-0725 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uced20

Searching for Deeper Meaning in Children's

Drawings

Cathleen S. Soundy

To cite this article: Cathleen S. Soundy (2012) Searching for Deeper Meaning in Children's
Drawings, Childhood Education, 88:1, 45-51, DOI: 10.1080/00094056.2012.643718

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00094056.2012.643718

Published online: 13 Jan 2012.

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 Searching for
© Vinicius Tupinamba

Deeper Meaning
in Children’s
Drawings
by Cathleen S. Soundy

C
Cathleen S. Soundy is Associate Professor, Curriculum Instruction and
Technology in Education,Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

hildren delight in “giving voice” to their drawings. “Their pictures can be worth a thousand words, if
you let them tell you their story.” This reconstructed adage, offered by a preservice teacher, points to the
inextricable way that language is interwoven into the artistic lives of young children. If provided the
opportunity, children can express powerful and imaginative ideas and make meaning through visual and verbal modes. When
adults spend time talking with children about their artwork, they see glimpses of imagination at work, as well as effective uses
of language. One poignant example emerged as a small group of kindergartners participated in a read-aloud activity in which
they were asked to draw a picture in response to The Snowy Day (Keats, 1962). The following excerpt from a preservice teach-
er’s journal describes how her interaction with one child led to an improved understanding of the child’s graphic choices.

When 5-year-old Emily began her drawing, she said, “I’m drawing a night picture.” Moments later, when finished, she
requested help in writing her caption to “Snowmen at Night.” Looking at her drawing, I was puzzled. Emily was a
bright child—very creative, verbal, and artistically talented—so why, I wondered, had she resorted to scribbling when she
could have easily produced the snow-covered landscapes and scenes of children at play that were being created by the other
kindergartners in her small group? (See Figure 1.) I asked Emily to tell me more about her picture. “Well,” she said, “It’s
about the night before the boy makes the snowman in the snow.” Intrigued by her comment, but still not understanding,
I inquired, “What are these brown lines?” Emily responded, “Sticks; the little boy needs to make a snowman.” As I sat in
silence, gazing at this abstract piece of art, Emily continued, “The little boy needs sticks to make tracks . . . the little boy
needs sticks to smack the snow-covered tree. And the little boy needs a place to build the snowman.” She pointed to the
lighter shade of blue space in the lower part of the picture frame and announced, “This is the spot where Peter will build
the snowman. This is the brightest spot under the moon.”
Oh, I thought, this all makes sense, and wow, this thinking
is a little “out on a limb.” I was truly moved by this small
child’s vision, and felt strongly reassured that Emily was in-
deed the creative, highly verbal girl that I had seen in action
during earlier visits to the classroom. Now I can add “vi-
sionary” to the list of words I will use to characterize Emily.

Ms. Morrison, the preservice teacher in the opening vignette,

experienced a child’s dynamic, meaning-making process.
Unfortunately, many images produced by children are not
amenable to adult interpretation. Emily’s artwork lacked
recognizable attributes and features, and she adopted a rather
unconventional way of depicting her ideas. But when Ms.
Morrison entered into a dialogue about the context of the
drawing, Emily explained how the various marks were distin-
Figure 1 guished and she ascribed meaning. When invited to be inter-

January/February 2012 / 45
 preters of their drawings, children are able to com-
municate about novel and highly personal imagery
(Hurwitz & Carroll, 2008). Such conversations
place teachers in a better position to understand
children’s thought processes, extend their meaning
through interaction, and contribute to their future
development as visual meaning-makers.
This article will examine the drawings that chil-
dren produce in response to read-alouds. The focus
of interest is on the variety of ways that children
construct meaning and use imaginative and meta-
phoric thinking in their drawings. The goal is to
move early educators beyond reading images liter-
ally, or responding to the surface spectacle, and into
engaging them in joint attention episodes critical to
the process of discovering the underlying organiza-
tion and deeper meaning of children’s drawings.
What Does the Literature Say?
Sensitive educators know intuitively that children’s
talk informs the nature and content of their work
and helps clarify their intentions and processes of
thinking. But adults may not realize that the ways
children treat the material and the features of the
images they create are not solely determined by
stages of artistic development. Early childhood
educators need to be prepared to include the art-
ist’s purpose in discussions as well as to find ways to
stimulate children’s imaginations and metaphoric
fluency (Egan, 1999). Thus, teachers must learn to
see children as competent individuals whose views,
actions, and choices, as well as visual representa-
tions, are of value.
Drawing affords young children with a means to
express real and imaginary ideas, a form of commu-
nication that is worthy of teacher recognition and
support. Unfortunately, as Wright (2010) notes,
“Many traditional systems of schooling suppress
children’s free composing through drawing in favour
of teaching children the more rule-bound, struc-
tured symbol systems of numeracy and literacy” (p.
7). Teachers tend to focus their time and energies
on three critical categories of early literacy—oral
language, phonological awareness, and print knowl-
edge—areas that have been identified in recent
reviews of research as essential to early literacy in-
struction (Roskos, Christie, & Richgels, 2003).
In general, spoken and written languages have
been considered the dominant system of meaning
used in schools, with the visual mode often rel-
egated to the role of supporting written text (Kress,
1997). Little attention has been paid to analyz-
ing and understanding visual images (Kendrick &
McKay, 2009), perhaps, in part, because ascribing
meaning to children’s artwork is not a straightfor-
46 \ Childhood Education
ward process. Although practitioners often provide
time for children to create art, most feel that they
lack the requisite artistic and aesthetic training, as
well as the higher-level interpretive skills, necessary
to talk with children and guide their learning about
art (Eglinton, 2003). In order to help teachers
understand children’s responses to literature and
the ideas on which their expressions are based, it is
important to consider the ways that children arrive
at the images they draw.
Art activities have the potential to help individu-
als think. Literal and metaphoric responses can
be tools for intellectual discovery (Egan, 2005).
Children experience strong emotions, and “how
they feel about a particular object, person, or event
is reflected in the way they treat it in a drawing”
(Eisner, 2002, p. 113). In addition, children act on
impulses as they draw, accompanied by dramatic
gestures and speech. Many researchers have com-
mented on the striking similarity between children’s
drawings and early “role-play” or make-believe play
(Cooke, Griffin, & Cox, 1998; Hopperstad, 2008).
Interconnected moments of thinking, feeling, and
acting often spark innovative ideas and creative
responses that can be given form through various
modes of symbolic representation (Wright, 2010).
As young artists respond to and produce their
own visual texts, they intuitively improvise and add
decorative elements to their artwork. Some indi-
viduals turn to designing or playing “visual games”
and engaging in intricate pattern-making activities
(Kolbe, 2007). These children enjoy exploring
“repetitions, symmetries, and divisions of spaces
into even smaller spaces” (Kolbe, 2005, p. 30) and
orienting the picture toward pattern rather than
toward action. On other occasions, youngsters elect
to use drawing as a mechanism for telling stories
(Gallas, 2003). Sometimes, children narrate these
experiences through internal dialogues; other times,
they speak openly with peers and adults. Either
way, the talk that accompanies drawing has the
power to enhance meaning (Hopperstad, 2008).
During the early years, “Children are commu-
nicators who have a natural desire to discover and
communicate what they know, understand, wonder
about, question, feel, and imagine” (Pitri, 2007, p.
34). Unfortunately, few frameworks exist for exam-
ining children’s artwork or the processes that reveal
communicative intentions and differing purposes
for drawing. In this exploratory study, the author
attempts to make sense of this rich diversity of
meaning-making by creating a classification system
that presents a way for preservice teachers to un-
derstand students’ visual responses to picturebooks
with a more critical and informed eye.
Categories of Childhood Experience
Using grounded theory techniques, the author
developed categories of childhood experience
that were evident in the drawings. This typology
evolved from the author’s examination of over 450
pieces of artwork from a larger study produced by
kindergarten and 1st-grade children in response to
The Snowy Day and Snowmen at Night (Buehner,
2002), two picturebooks about snowy landscapes.
Five categories of childhood experience were identi-
fied and used to illuminate the nature of children’s
drawings: 1) Thinking—Using Verbal Memory, 2)
Feeling—Expressing Emotions, 3) Acting—Moving
Into the Drawing, 4) Creating—Making Designs
and Patterns, and 5) Narrating—Telling a Story.
The goal was to expose preservice teachers to a tool
for discussing children’s finished drawings as well
as for understanding the creative and conceptual
thinking that guides its development.
This emerging set of categories was used by
undergraduate students who were enrolled in the
author’s early childhood courses. Although some
overlapping of purposes existed, initial student
feedback indicated that the categories worked rea-
sonably well in identifying and describing all of the
examples that were encountered. But the number
of drawings was small and some refinement to the
category system will likely occur over time. During
the course of this study, however, students were lim-
ited to the five categories.
Context of the Study
This article explores children’s artistic responses,
along with written and verbal expressions, to gain
insight into how kindergarten and 1st-grade chil-
dren use imaginative and metaphorical thinking.
One task, the focus of this article, was a research
assignment that asked preservice teachers to con-
duct a read-aloud of The Snowy Day and to observe
two children drawing, writing, and speaking about
their choice of a favorite scene from the book. The
theme, “Celebrate Winter,” was chosen because the
study took place in February and snow was a topic
that participants could easily recall through previ-
ous experiences.
The interpretations of the classroom reality were
accessed directly through field notes written by the
preservice teachers during the instructional phase of
the assignment. Small-group, follow-up discussions
of the children’s work samples occurred during
regular class time near the end of the semester. In
analyzing the data, the author and her students used
a qualitative, interpretative research approach with
a specific focus on image-based research (Kress &
van Leeuwen, 1996). The evidence included notes
from preservice teachers’ journal entries related to
informal conversations with the children; reflective
comments; and the children’s writings, drawings,
and “tellings.” The preservice teachers related their
findings to the categories by identifying the major
purpose of their respective children’s drawings. The
examples featured in the next section appear in the
respective category that best represents the child’s
purpose for drawing.
Scenes From the Classroom
The artwork in this article was selected from a set of
120 drawings produced by children ranging from
5 to 7 years. The five drawings presented for com-
mentary were chosen based on the perception that
the works were highly representative of the respec-
tive category, and were the most interesting and
typical of the age group under study. They served
as models for explaining how young children create
and express meaning through art and design work.
A foundation for thinking about these categorical
themes is provided and attention is given to the met-
aphorical, analogical nature of children’s artwork.
The Categorical Framework
inking—Using Visual Memory. Picture-
Th
books provide an array of beautiful illustrations and
may offer a way for children to visualize a full and
rich picture in their mind’s eye. Anning’s (1997)
research on visual systems of meaning shows that
“from the earliest stages of drawing, children can
demonstrate remarkable powers of accurate repre-
sentation of what they have seen and learned” (p.
230). When a child thinks about a favorite scene
from the book, the image he sees in his mind’s eye
exists in his thinking (Efland, 2002). The following
excerpt from a preservice teacher’s journal illustrates
how one child held an image of her favorite scene in
her mind’s eye as she created her picture.
When Victoria drew the mountain scene from The Snowy
Day, she saw no need to converse or talk her way through
the process. She approached the task with an idea already
formed about what she wanted to express. Victoria drew en-
tirely from memory, “out of her head.” Her finished picture
bore a visual likeness to the mountain scene illustrated on the
last double-page layout. (See Figure 2.) Victoria completed
her project by writing, “It is very cold outside. It (snow) is
very deep.” Victoria responded “No” when I asked her if she
wanted to tell me anything else about her picture.
As I reflected on Victoria’s finished drawing, I continued
to think about how much her image looked like the one in
the picturebook. Victoria’s ability to re-create the scene in
the book was quite good, especially considering that the il-
January/February 2012 / 47

Figure 2
lustrations were not available to her during the drawing
phase. Victoria accessed her short-term memory to re-create
the overall configuration of the mountain scene. Her finished
drawing revealed that she had absorbed the organizational
structure and spatial relationships created by the illustrator.
Most remarkably, she seemed attuned to the emotional power
of the scene. By including the short platform at the bottom
of the page, Victoria was able to position Peter and his friend
in an open doorway and to re-create the illusion of wonder
felt by the boys as they looked out on a winter landscape that
was fresh, new, and bright. Although Victoria was probably
not fully conscious of the particular emotion embodied in the
artist’s powerful imagery, she no doubt chose to reproduce the
image that held meaning for her—on both an intellectual
and an emotional level.
An analysis of Victoria’s drawing showed that
some children are adept at picturing visual images
and “reading out” this imagery in the form of draw-
ing. Victoria’s drawing was highly imitative of a
scene from the picturebook. In her role as meaning-
maker, Victoria used her visual memory for color,
form, and content, as well as her developed graphic
skills, to respond to The Snowy Day and to produce a
drawing with a high level of visual realism.
Feeling—Expressing Emotion. Teachers have
long recognized the power of picturebooks to awak-
en feelings and emotions. But practitioners may
not have realized that children approach artwork
already responsive to an inner world of feelings and
psychological moods (Golomb, 2004). Although
certain human qualities can be difficult to com-
municate, children disclose emotions and attitudes
in many ways, and even very young children seem
particularly adept at producing expressive content in
48 \ Childhood Education
Figure 3
their art (Jolley, 2010). Picard, Brechet, and Baldy
(2007) studied children’s use of expressive strategies
and found that the children typically used facial ex-
pressions and body positions to provide literal cues.
Support for identifying non-literal aspects of expres-
sion also have appeared in the literature. Eisner
(2002) states, “What is important is often exagger-
ated, what is important is often made more visible,
what is important secures a prominence on the paper
that confers on it the significance they want to ex-
press” (p. 113).
The drawing chosen to exemplify the second
category features the work of a child who is quite
capable of transmitting feelings through an artistic
channel of communication. The image of this par-
ticular snowman displays the qualities of vitality and
exuberance indicative of children’s highly expressive
abilities. The following reflection from a student
teacher’s journal provides insight on a child who
seemed more intent on expressing emotion rather
than replicating visual likeness to the graphic model.
Donald’s drawing is a compelling piece of art, an expression of
pure joy. (See Figure 3.) Donald used the snowman’s face to
portray emotion and he drew an upwardly curving mouth as
a symbol of happiness. He also created a metaphorical form
of expression. The snowman’s stance and the angle of his arms
is one clear example. The elongated arms that reach into the
sky may be representing Donald’s experience of reaching for
joy. The “thumbs up” gesture, signaling “way to go,” adds to
the sense of liveliness. Even the snowman’s location in space
provides relevant information. The snowman is suspended in
air, not touching the baseline. Donald completed his project
by saying, “The snowman is jumping for joy, but I don’t know
how to write it.” He left the writing space blank. When I
asked Donald to tell me more about his drawing, he respond-
ed, “I drew a happy snowman. The snowman is having fun.
Wheee. . . . He is jumping for joy. I liked the part when he
bounced in the air.”
Clearly, children have the capacity to reveal feel-
ings within the very form and content of their
work. Their drawings often contain a symbolic and
communicative purpose. Donald’s snowman func-
tioned similarly to a metaphor in that it was repre-
sentative of an intangible emotional state. He used
both literal and nonliteral qualities in his drawing
to convey expressions of joy and excitement.
Acting—Moving Into the Drawing. Picture-
books have the potential to become a source of in-
spiration for young readers’ active learning and cre-
ative interactions. Kolczyski (1989) states, “When
children become engaged in a story, character, or
situation, they often form an identification with
aspects of the story that hold personal meaning for
them” (p. 79). Children move “inside the experi-
ence” by using first-person narrative to talk to them-
selves or others, and they attempt to weave events
around the marks being made, almost as a parallel to
pretend play (Wright, 2010). As this study reveals,
it’s not unusual for children to become active par-
ticipants and imaginatively enter the picture frame.
The following excerpt from a student teacher’s
journal highlights how one child “slipped into the
picture” and became a character on the page.
Tatianna placed herself next to the main character in the
mountain scene. When it came time to write, she simply
labeled the characters as “Me and Peter.” (See Figure 4.)
In essence, her purpose was to step into the picture frame so
she could interact with Peter and experience the beauty of
the falling snow. Tatianna’s casual story-like unfolding of
events indicates that she is living in the literary experience
of the moment. When I asked her to tell me more about her
picture, she readily supplied additional details: “I am in the
Figure 4
picture. I drew the boy red to look like Peter and the other
to look like me. I don’t have a snow outfit like he did. My
mom lets me play in the snow, but I don’t have a snow outfit.
Peter and I are looking at the snow on the mountains. It is
beautiful. The snow is falling on our heads (gestures by cov-
ering her head with her hands). I am having fun walking
with Peter. I like to do that, too.”
By virtually moving into the action zone, children
become agents with storybook characters and
directly identify with events, images, or anything
else that attracts their interest. Tatianna’s picture
demonstrates how she took on a role in her own
drawing and acted out meaning. Her motivation
may have stemmed from a desire to join Peter in his
exploration of the snowy landscape.
Creating—Making Designs and Patterns. Il-
lustrations in high-quality picturebooks are valued
for their aesthetic pleasure. Children admire these
pictures as pleasantly decorative compositions
(Nodelman, 1988); at a very early age, they also
begin to exhibit an interest in applying decora-
tion and making designs and patterns in their own
drawings (Hope, 2008). Cooke, Griffin, and Cox
(1998) found that children make shapes “for their
own sake, with the artist taking delight in pattern,
color and texture” (p. 10). Kolbe (2005) discusses
children’s desire for visual order and states that
they take “pleasure in arranging things—whether
lining up pebbles or tiny toys in a row, or arrang-
ing lines, shapes and colors on a sheet of paper” (p.
Figure 5
January/February 2012 / 49
 29). The following excerpt from a student teacher’s
journal explains how one child took delight in
decorating her composition.
Five-year-old Rayna showed strong imagination and interest
in including patterns in her unfinished composition. Rayna
playfully distributed the elements of color and form across the
page. Skills of visual improvisation were used when Rayna
drew the oval-shaped hills. She applied multi-layers of colors
between the hills to communicate her excitement in being
able to freely explore the outdoors. (See Figure 5.) Peter
is drawn as a simple tadpole person, with his arms and legs
radiating outward from his head. Rayna talked as she drew
and her words provided insight to her underlying thoughts:
“I like using all the colors. My favorite part is when Peter
went on the hills. He could go anywhere he wanted.” Rayna
carried through with an equally high level of interest in color
as she wrote about her picture. Each word of her written text
was printed in a different color: “My favorite part was when
he went on the hill because I liked when . . . he went with
his friend.” As the activity neared closure, I asked Rayna if
she would like to tell me anything else about her picture. She
responded, “Peter is getting ready for the steep hills. He is
doing jumping jacks to warm-up.” Rayna didn’t have time
to finish her picture because she was so intent on coloring the
spaces between the mountains.
Children often let their minds roam freely as
they work to understand their world. Rayna’s style
of drawing was influenced by her playful explora-
tion with color and repetitive forms within her
picture as part of the total image. The aesthetic
pleasure derived from arranging horizontal layers of
colors between the hills may have enhanced Rayna’s
visual creativity.
Narrating—Telling a Story. Picturebooks play a
central role in enabling young readers to understand
narrative structure, character, and setting (Good-
Figure 6
50 \ Childhood Education
win, 2009). Research on narrative development
demonstrates that “telling stories helps children
frame their thoughts, emotions, and social cultural
identity” (Curenton, 2006, p. 78). Children fre-
quently tell stories and draw pictures about their
experiences—both lived and imagined (Wright,
2010). Golomb (2004) states that “the act of draw-
ing becomes a vehicle for the expression of personal
fantasies” (p. 161), and visual narratives often point
to children’s themes of interest, such as contests be-
tween opposing forces of good and evil—of victory
and defeat. The following excerpt from a student
teacher’s journal shows how one child begins to tell
a story based on events from The Snowy Day, but
then proceeds to weave a new, personal narrative
out of the fantasy and play it inspires.
Michael drew a snow-covered mountain and then added
two teams of boys engaged in a snowball fight. (See Figure
6.) He thought about writing the caption “The snowball
fight” under his picture, but then declined. He was much
more interested in talking about the event. Michael told
his version of the story, explaining that the people dressed
in blue represented Peter and the good guys. Michael even
pointed to Peter and to each person, identified his respective
team, and provided detail on who started the fight. Here
are some of his words: “The other guys, in purple, are bad
guys and they started a snowball fight with Peter and his
friends. Peter and his friends win, but only after a boy from
the purple team falls off the mountain. He gets hurt and
leaves the fight. The other guys start throwing bigger snow-
balls and they win.”
Children often combine spoken, written, and
visual representation to communicate that some-
thing has happened. While some children’s visual
and verbal narratives display a progression of events
from a clear beginning and on to a satisfactory end-
ing, Michael chose to represent partial aspects of
experience in order to better understand the charac-
ters and the main event. He used knowledge from
his real life and from the picturebook to weave his
story elements together and create a new ending.
Conclusion
As with any form of communication, drawing can
be influenced by many aspects of the child’s home
background or cultural life, as well as by experi-
ences in the classroom setting. Children’s graphic
strategies, communicative intentions, and differing
purposes for drawing provide teachers with mul-
tiple vantage points from which to view children’s
creativity and efforts to make meaning. Close
observation of the drawing activity itself, as well as
of the talk and writing that accompanies it, reveals
how children become interested in a topic and mo-
tivated to produce their inner ideas and thoughts.
The importance of feelings or affect and desires
to act out or dramatize an event through drawing
must not be underestimated, because these differ-
ent forms of inspiration often become part of the
complex mix of social and emotional forces at work.
Children tap into their own unique thoughts, feel-
ings, and impulses, as well as an interest in aesthet-
ics and telling stories, as they discover new strategies
for communicating.
The topology presented in this article can be ben-
eficial to educators as they talk with children about
their drawings and design work. By adopting a cat-
egorical system with five components of childhood
experience—thinking, feeling, acting, creating, and
narrating—the author provided a framework for
understanding the meaning-making capacities and
the purposes of young children’s drawings. This
classification, however artificial, can function as
a pedagogical tool to initiate thinking about chil-
dren’s intentions and to examine both literal and
metaphoric levels of meaning. Until the field de-
velops sound techniques to analyze children’s visual
images and meaning-making capacities, exploratory
attempts must continue to be made to understand
the dynamic and complex relationships between
verbal and visual modes of expression.
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