Visual Realism in Children’s Drawing

ashis — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:57:54 +0000

Children interpret their surroundings with their different strokes; whether, while playing, it is lines drawn with a stick on the ground to represent no-go areas or the representation of the three stumps of the cricket game by drawing three lines on the wall with a thick charcoal , they interpret their everyday life in various ways. Children put down their impressions of their environment in sketch books as well. A good deal of study has gone into the interpretation of children’s drawings. The drawings have even helped experts in diagnosis of children behaviour.
Interpretation of children’s drawing was famously shown in Shekhar Kapur’s movie “Masoom”. An illegitimate child’s yearning for place in a family was poignantly depicted through the child’s story board.
There are other interesting aspects of children’s drawing, visual realism is one example. In this article let us see this interesting aspect as we trace the progress of visual realism in children’s drawings, as they become older. In particular, we will see how children deal with transparency in drawings. We will see this with examples of children’s drawings of floating objects like ships, boats and yachts.
Below is a 5 year old child’s drawing. Notice that a person has been placed right at the bottom of the hull of a ship by this child. Also, we are able to see this person placed inside the hull as if the hull were transparent. The child’s comprehension of space and its translation onto paper is interesting. The child’s depiction of transparency of the hull is worth noting.

Image courtesy Joseph H. Di Leo’s book on ‘Interpreting children’s drawings’

Let us move to the next stage. Here the child who drew the picture below is a few months older. The child’s sense of space is more keener but she still hasn’t quite grasped the transparency issue

Image courtesy Joseph H. Di Leo’s book on ‘Interpreting children’s drawings’

Here is the third stage. The drawer is 6 years old. The boy drawing the below picture has made a compromise between spatial positioning and transparency. He has placed a person on the deck. This is how he is trying to bring the picture closer to visual reality.

Image courtesy Joseph H. Di Leo’s book on ‘Interpreting children’s drawings’

The next stage almost mimics visual reality. The person’s trunk is hidden in the boat’s hull. The drawer is a boy of 6 plus years. He recongnises that the face is the most important item that he wants to show. So even though the person wears a beard he has made sure that the face can still be seen by making the beard semi transparent.

Image courtesy Joseph H. Di Leo’s book on ‘Interpreting children’s drawings’

Our drawer has grown older. S/he has opacity and spatial sense. This seven and a half year old depicts a man in a sailing boat. As an adult would imagine, the trunk of this person’s body is not seen. The partly submerged boat is also correctly depicted. The child has now a keen grasp of visual realism.

Image courtesy Joseph H. Di Leo’s book on ‘Interpreting children’s drawings’

The point we are trying to make is that the transparency and spatial sense of a child is progressive. Would it not be fun to watch the transformation as your child goes from subreal to real to surreal?

Why Did My Son Not Become A Literary Giant?

ashis — Sat, 09 May 2009 09:53:06 +0000

My son, when he was a kindergartner, was always fascinated by the cawing of crows. I am not sure if the raucous call was music to his ears but his fascination for crows was unwavering. I recall a time when the family went out to the zoo on a Sunday afternoon. My wife was trying to get him excited about the big cats that were gnashing their teeth and circling in their pens. But his interests lay elsewhere. He ran after a crow that took off from the back of a hippopotamus. He was looking up and running, tracing the flight of the crow. The nice family outing ended when he ran into a puddle and submerged himself in mud.

Not long after this fascinated-with-crow incident, we had another fascinated-with-crow incident. His mother was reading him out a story of a king and queen when a crow started cawing outside our window. My son’s ears cocked up. And suddenly he recited the following lines:

The crow was flying high and high

Pecked the Queen

The King was angry

The crow was jealous

Now, how in the world did he blurt out these lines? To this day I don’t know. But that day I was absolutely convinced that my son is going to be a literary sensation. My wife quickly jotted these lines down in her diary lest his literary awakening was lost forever.

But after that nothing happened. Not a single verse came out from his pencil, pen or ballpoint-pen. We cajoled him and coaxed him but to no avail. He and verse, the twain did not meet ever again. Mind you, he often got stars for his compositions in school. But we could never coax out a verse from his pen ever.

So, what had happened? I know one verse does not a poet make. But he had imagination –which indeed he still has in abundance- and a huge enthusiasm for reading. So why did he not carry on from his King and Queen poem? Was there something which I and my wife, as parents, should have done differently? Was there something which his teachers should have done differently? Or, was he not wired to be a poet at all?

I do not have the answers.

What do you think? Do you have the answers? Or perhaps some pointers where I and others could find the answers?

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Visual Realism in Children’s Drawing

Why Did My Son Not Become A Literary Giant?