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?

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Visual Realism in Children’s Drawing