The development of children's expressive drawing

Abstract

Two studies are presented on expressive happy and sad drawings made by British 4‐ to 12‐year‐olds (n = 80 and 160, respectively) in which the drawings were assessed individually for the quantity and quality of expressive devices. Quantity was measured in the number of appropriate expressive content themes and formal properties evident in each drawing. Quality was rated on a Likert scale on the extent to which the drawing expressed the intended mood. Both the quantity and quality of expressive happy and sad drawings of predetermined and free topics increased with age. Improvements in content expression, but much less so with expressive formal properties, accounted for the development of quantity. A slower period of development between 6 and 9 years for both measures was consistently found, with a significant improvement often shown among the 12‐year‐olds. The finding that happy drawings were scored higher than sad drawings is explained in respect of adult and child expectations of pictures. Correlations between expressive scores and performance on a visual realism drawing task tentatively indicated that expressive and realism skills in drawing are only weakly related. The development of expressive drawing is considered in the context of the delivery of art education in schools.

Linear and U-shape trends in the development of expressive drawing from preschoolers to normative and artistic adults.

“…Our linear trends support the developmental progressions reported in much of the empirical literature on children's expressive drawings (e.g., Ives, 1984;Jolley et al, 2004;Morra et al, 2004;Picard et al, 2007;Picard & Gauthier, 2012;Winston et al, 1995), although only Ives included samples of adolescents and adults, and none of these studies conducted trend analysis on their data. The linear relations between age and the expressive drawing (raw) measures were, according to Cohen et al's (2003) criteria (see Warner, 2008), large in strength when age was a continuous measure.…”

“…Bearing in mind the strong leaps that children make in their representational drawing it is possible that judges not Linear and U-shape trends 8 steeped in a modernist perspective may be susceptible to the confound presented by the realistic rendering of the subject matter. The references to complexity, technique and increasing representational repertoire as contributions to the age-related progressions reported (Jolley et al, 2004;Pariser & van den Berg, 2001) only serve further to caution us.…”

“…The two raters then independently generated subject matter themes in which the content items could be semantically grouped, with the themes reported by Jolley et al (2004) on children's 'free' drawings providing some guidance. For instance, both raters categorised the items 'sun', Linear and U-shape trends 14 'clouds', 'sky', 'rain' (etc.)…”

“…By contrast there is a body of work that shows variations of ageincremental increases in expressive drawing performance (e.g., Ives, 1984;Jolley, Fenn & Jones, 2004;Morra, Caloni & d'Amico, 1994;Picard, Brechet & Baldy, 2007;Picard & Gauthier, 2012;Winston, Kenyon, Stewardson & Lepine, 1995). This study set out to resolve the apparently conflicting age-incremental and U-shape patterns in children's expressive drawing.Expressive drawing is a communication of moods, feelings and ideas through three broad types of graphic techniques: literal, content and abstract (Ives, 1984;Jolley, 2010;Jolley et al, 2004;Morra et al, 1994;Picard et al, 2007). Literal expression is typically depicted by facial expressions.…”

10.5937/specedreh13-6665 = Dynamic drawing characteristics of preschool and younger school age children

“…Iz tog razloga, stadijume intelektualnog i vizuelnog realizma treba proučavati sa aspekta različitih sistema ili stilova crtanja (Jolley et al, 2004). Imajući u vidu prethodne navode, kao osnovni cilj ovog istraživanja smo definisali utvrđivanje razvojnih karakteristika dinamičkog crteža kod dece predškolskog i mlađeg školskog uzrasta.…”