The Development

Of Children’s

Drawings and Paintings

Catherine Bailey

Symbolic Processes in Childhood

Jan Drucker

December 2002

            While watching the development of the paintings and drawings of nine young three-year-olds in a class at the Early Childhood Center in Bronxville, New York over the past few months, I have been exposed to many wonderful pieces of art.  I have seen these children at a prime age, progressing from scribbles all the way through to human representation.  Also, being that my observations are on such a small scale, with only nine sets of paintings to look at, it is amazing how varied each child’s style is and at how many different stages in development these children are, despite similarities in age.  In the final month of these observations, (December of this year), these nine children range in age from three to four years—just the age that is commonly known for children to begin drawing decipherable objects and shapes.  It is because these children are at such a perfect age to observe their paintings and that I have seen so much development in their artwork in such a short period of time, (just over three months), that my interest in their paintings and drawings grew and grew.  After researching this subject further I not only have an understanding of the development of children’s drawings and the different stages that each child goes through, but I have also learned a lot about each of the students from their drawings and paintings themselves. 

            In my discussion of the development of children’s drawings and paintings that is to come I will be referring to those of the children whose work I have observed by a name that I have arbitrarily made up for each of them.  Also, when referring to a specific painting or drawing that one of them has done that are shown at the end of this paper, I will write for example, J. P. 1, in which the J stands for the first letter of the child’s name, the P denotes it as a painting instead of a D for a drawing, and the 1 means that it is the first in his or her series of paintings.  I will be using these paintings and drawings as examples to help explain the development of children’s art. 

                Although there is not a huge amount of literature on the development of children’s art, most writers on this subject are in general agreement about the stages of development, although they use different terminology at times.  One of the most influential writers on this subject is Rhoda Kellogg and it is her book, Analyzing Children’s Art, that most of the other writers use as their main source of information, as I have done.  When she first published her book in 1969 there was not much written about the development of art from the very earliest scribbles on paper.  Through years of academic research, beginning with childhood scribbles on paper, however, Kellogg was able to come up with a sort of classification system beginning with the twenty basic scribbles and the seventeen placement patterns all the way through to human representation.  These guidelines established by Kellogg were really a beginning, a point of departure for most of the further work on this subject. 

            While people used to dismiss children’s first scribbles as meaningless and pointless, these modern writers have emphasized their importance for the basis of all further art work.  In fact, it has been agreed upon that scribbles, usually starting at the age of eighteen months, “are not aimless and uncoordinated movements, but demonstrate awareness of pattern and increasing eye-hand coordination” (Thomas and Silk 34).  Kellogg agrees that “visual interest is an essential component of scribbling (7)” and that her twenty basic scribbles that are made by two-year-olds and younger “are the building blocks of art” (15) [1] .  She notes that the twenty basic scribbles have no developmental order.  However, it is obvious just from the nine examples of children that I have observed that every child uses many of these scribbles in his/her early drawings and that each child also has their favorites.  Similarly, with the seventeen placement patterns that are the next step in Kellogg’s developmental progression, each child has one or more favorites that they use repeatedly [2] .  The difference with these placement patterns, however, is that unlike scribbles, they “require both seeing and the eye’s guidance of the hand” (23).  Because I have seen these children each use specific scribbles and placement patterns it is obvious to me that their eyes have definitely begun to guide their hands, and they do it repeatedly according to what pleases their eye. 

Examples of the way that children repeat these scribbles and placement patterns begins on pages 15 and 16 where Erin uses dots as her main scribble in most of her paintings.  Then on pages 17 and 18 Peter continually uses the whole page in his first five paintings.  Ivy’s two favorite placement patterns, base-line fan and the center of the page, can be seen on page 19 and on page 20, Cyrus’ use of a general center of the page placement pattern can be seen.  Finally, on pages 21-23, Zoe’s original normal placement pattern was the center of the page until she began painting “letters” and at that point she switched to an across the page placement pattern, just like one would write a line of words. 

At such an early stage these children obviously already have very unique styles and ideas about their art.  Alschuler and Hattwick confirm this idea saying that “almost every drawing and painting made by a young child is meaningful and in some measure expresses the child who did it” (5) and that “each child has his own palette (i.e., each child has certain preferred colors and certain ways of combining these colors), as well as his own individual pattern of expression” (3).  The purple that James made in his J. P. 1 on page 24 is a perfect example of this, because in this painting and in several others before and after this one, he made a point to mix red and blue to make purple.  He always voiced this as well, claiming that he “made purple” over and over again.  This is just one example that shows how each child has specific colors and styles for their own work. 

            Even though the drawings and paintings of very young children are not ‘meaningless’ and are, in fact, very important in the further development of their artwork, these earliest pieces still don’t have a specific meaning, or in other words are not representing a certain object, like many adults want them to be.  Many adults will ask a child what he is drawing when the child is still just drawing for the sake of discovery and experimentation and not to draw anything in particular. Some adults also draw objects or people for the children to copy, thinking that they are helping their children progress, when they are actually doing the opposite.  Kellogg believes that this premature instruction either leads children to copy the adults’ object or figure a few times and then forget it or become obsessed with making theirs look just like that of the adults, not allowing for the child’s own natural development (144).  Barbara Biber agrees with this statement, writing that if the child’s “father, for instance, has precipitated his interest in representation by drawing people, houses, or animals, he is less likely to be in line for an individual discovery” of his art (5).  One day near Halloween in the class this year Erin’s father visited.  While he was there, Erin did a painting in which he painted a pumpkin.  As soon as he did this, she proceeded to desperately copy his pumpkin, although she could not complete an accurate replica.  After this she quickly switched back to the dots and vertical lines that are so much more characteristic of her current developmental stage than any representational object (see E. P. 4 on page 15).  It is because of instances like these that Kellogg and O’Dell are able to conclude that “children who are left alone to draw what they like develop a store of knowledge which enables them to reach their final stage of self-taught art” (17).  They continue to express the idea that “too often, children lose interest in art at about the age of seven because they feel the disapproval of adults who try to prod them into neat and acceptable art molds” (87).  Since every child naturally has such wonderful and unique art styles, it is a shame that so many children end up either hating art or thinking that they aren’t good at it, merely because they might not be as good as others at making things look exactly like they are ‘supposed’ to look.  Any modern adult artist today could tell you that mere representation, although important to some people’s work, is not a necessary aspect of art at all.  There are so many other areas that people could be stronger in according to their personal preferences. It is sad that the world loses so many young artists every year to this false belief.   

            However, there are also millions of children who are surrounded by positive and encouraging adults who don’t tell them to draw anything specifically so that they can naturally come upon their own representational drawings.  After children experiment with the different scribbles and begin to use the different placement patterns, they move from the pattern stage to the shape stage when they begin to draw Emergent Diagram Shapes.  These Emergent Diagram Shapes are sort of in-between pure scribbles and outlined shapes that really show the progression from one level of development to another.  Then, by the age of three children begin to “make Diagrams, with single lines employed to form crosses and to outline circles, triangles, and other shapes” (Kellogg 33 and 39).    For example, in Derron’s D. P. 5 and D. P. 6 on page 28, he paints incomplete circular shapes that are in-between just scribbles and outlined shapes because they are not quite defined circles.  Then on the same page, in his D. P. 8, he first begins to make truly outlined shapes, such as triangles.  This Emergent Diagram Shape stage for him, although it only lasted about one month in time, was definitely there and was a big part in getting him from one level to the next.  Similarly, in Meryl’s paintings on page 29, she just scribbles in her M. P. 1 and then moves on to Emergent Diagram Shapes of near-circles in M. P. 2 and 3 and finally closes these shapes, outlining them in M. P. 4.  It is, however, hard to tell because the shapes overlap each other.  Peter’s paintings on pages 17 and 18 are another perfect example of the Emergent Diagram Shape stage because in his P. P. 1, 2 and 3 he only used scribbles.  Later in the year in P. P. 4 and 5 his Diagrams began emerging with the near-circles, and finally in his most recent paintings, P. P. 6 and 7, he has begun to close his shapes, making circular and oval outlined shapes.  In general, the first outlined shape that children make is circular, and Thomas and Silk quoted Arnheim (1956) writing that “the first enclosed form made by children—the “primordial circle”—appears to be able to stand for almost any object from the child’s environment” (35).  It is with this beginning of closed shapes, with the circle that can stand for anything, that most children then move on to more complex shapes and then eventually representational objects. 

            In the full-fledged Diagram stage, children begin to draw six different Diagrams, those being the rectangle, the oval, the triangle, the Greek cross, the diagonal cross, and the odd shape.  Developmentally, “the Diagrams indicate an increasing ability to make a controlled use of lines and to employ memory” (Kellogg 45).  An example of memory working to influence a child’s paintings occurs in James’ J. P. 1 and then in J. P. 5 on pages 24 and 25 when he repeats his handprints.  Although the handprint is certainly not one of the six outlined Diagrams, in this case it works the same way in that it is an object that he discovered previously and continued to repeat in a lot of his paintings over the course of three months.  His handprint is something that he discovered accidentally one day, in the beginning of the school year, and became fascinated with the shape it made and used it over and over again.  Moving on from these Diagrams, children enter the design stage sometime between the age of three and four years when they begin putting diagrams together to form Combines or Aggregates which are basically two Diagrams put together, or three or more Diagrams put together, respectively (48).  James’ J. P. 6 on page 25 shows one of his first outlined shapes that is filled in, which is really just a filled in Diagram.  Then both his J. P. 7 and 8 on the same page use the same kind of filled in Diagram, but in multiples, and with many different shapes, creating a kind of Aggregate specific to his style.  Zoe’s progression from Diagrams to Aggregates is also very noteworthy, as on page 21 she moves from the outlined shape Diagram of Z. P. 2 to her Aggregate design, combining several different shapes into a very unique pattern in Z. P. 4.  Kellogg and O’Dell note that “almost from the moment they are able to draw shapes in outline form, children begin to combine these forms into designs” (43).  With just these two examples of children moving from outlined shapes to designs it is clear that this progression is not only a speedy one, but that it also occurs naturally without any outside guidance. 

            After the child can put these outlined shapes into Combines and Aggregates, or sometimes at the same time as he makes these, he begins to form Mandala shapes.  Mandalas, which come from the Sanskrit word for circle, are merely geometric shapes in a concentric formation.  They are often Combines or Aggregates and often include a cross inside another object (Kellogg 64).  Kellogg and O’Dell go on to say that “Mandalas are an important point of departure from which the child proceeds to draw suns, radials, and eventually human figures” (55).  Mandalas are important because they play such an essential role in linking circles to things like suns and humans.  It is because of this that they allow for a natural transition from children’s abstract to pictorial work.  It is through this progression from Mandalas to humans that children not only begin to name their drawings more frequently but also that their drawings begin to be a picture of someone or something in particular.  Kellogg makes a good point that in this stage a child’s first “sun” might not really be a sun to the child, but an adult might just label it as one, proud that the child can now “draw” for real.  Without it ever really having to be anything, the Mandala naturally provides stimulus for suns, and in turn, they both do this for humans (Kellogg 74).  Claire Golomb agrees with this, writing that the “first human model is a global figure, and graphic differentiation of parts and features is confined inside the circle” (37).  Because balance and symmetry are both so important in these first Mandalas, Kellogg believes that “balance is very important in these [first] people drawings” as well (67).  An example of these first people drawings can be seen on page 22 with Zoe’s paintings, Z. P. 5, 6, and 7.  And although there weren’t any paintings of suns or radial designs before these faces, it is possible that she paints at home as well and that that small step in her development took place at home. Also, the fact that her drawings shown on page 23 do show a progression from circles in Z. D. 1 to sun designs in Z. D. 2 and 3 and then on to human figures in Z. D. 4 could make up for the lack in the development of her paintings.  Because she is at such a similar developmental stage in both her drawings and her paintings, it is easy to assume that her drawings of Mandalas and suns led to both the drawings and paintings of her humans.  However, her drawing Z. D. 4 is a slight bit developmentally further than her paintings just because of the legs that she added to make her heads into ‘tadpole people.’ 

This difference in style between the two mediums is not uncommon and the fact that she is becoming more detailed in her drawings than in her paintings actually makes a lot of sense.  The paintbrush allows for a much larger, general idea of a person, while a crayon or an oil pastel is much easier to work with on a small scale and allows much more room for detail.  In fact, in accordance with Zoe’s preference development, Alschuler and Hattwick note a “steady decrease of preference for easel paints in children between the ages of three and five years” (120).  They then go on to add that “children who [prefer] crayons [tend], as a group, to be more concerned with expressing ideas and with the desire to communicate with others than with finding a free outlet for their own impulses” (129).  From the children that I have observed, this makes sense as the two children who have done the most crayon drawings, Zoe and James, are the only two who have begun to draw human figures. With their drawings of these people they also generally have a story to tell about whom the people in the pictures are and what they are doing. 

In James’ case, his drawings J. D. 1 through J. D. 6 that can be seen on page 26 show a very clear development from Mandalas to suns to sun people to ‘tadpole people’.  These so-called tadpole people are usually the child’s first representations of humans and they generally consist of a circular head with facial features and two lines extending for legs.  Arms, hair, and ears are all pieces of secondary information that each child adds as he or she is ready.  Sometimes, however, these arms and/or any head-top markings are used to make the humans more like Mandalas and to add to the balance and symmetry of the figure (Kellogg 96).  In his J. D. 4, James does a good job of retaining the Mandala-like feel in his drawing of his “family in costumes.”  However, unlike Zoe, James’ paintings are not quite at the same developmental level that his drawings are.  While he has gone through the whole set of developmental levels up to that of human representation in his drawings, the fact that he is still working in the Aggregate stage in his paintings could mean that he has decided to only continue to develop in the drawing medium because it is easier to draw the more detailed images than to paint them. It is also possible that he has had less experience with the paints, perhaps because he has had more of an opportunity to draw at home, and therefore is still experimenting with them before his paintings can catch up to the level at which his drawings are.  In Nancy Smith’s article entitled “How a Picture Means,” she affirms the latter of these assumptions by writing that “as the capacity to symbolize develops, new media can invoke a rehearsal of the phases of discovery” and that “it is usual for a child encountering a material for the first time to explore basic properties of the material before using it to symbolize” (61).  It is entirely possible that painting is something that James is much newer to than drawing, and for that reason, he is still experimenting a little more before he moves from the design stage into representation. 

            Since these children are still young three-year-olds it is not hard to believe that the earliest human drawings are the farthest that these children have come developmentally.  In fact, it makes them just average or even above average because the average age for children to move into the early pictorial stage, (which includes drawings of animals, buildings, vegetation, and transportation) is sometime between four and five years (Kellogg 115).  However, something that both Zoe and James have become very interested in is incorporating language into their works of art.  On the roots of early literacy, Bachrudin Musthafa, in his article “Let Children Play and Develop into Readers and Writers of Their Own Worlds” writes that “all literacy routines that children observe and experience will find their way into children’s [art]” and that “the [art] that the children construct will, in turn, make the literacy(like) activity meaningful to them” (5).  Also, in her article “The Roots of Literacy Development,” Anne Haas Dyson gives an example that “the lines and curves of the word cake are not chosen to represent the physical characteristics of cake, but are arbitrarily related to the sound of the word.”  She uses this example to explain Vygotsky’s (1978, p. 115) assertion that “the written language of children develops in this fashion, shifting from drawings of things to drawing of words” (100). 

This fits perfectly with Zoe’s most recent paintings of letters that go across the page just like writing.  In both Z. P. 8 and 9 on pages 22 and 23 she called the paintings “the alphabet.”  It is this natural progression of art into literary work that is so wonderful and confirms the fact that because children are surrounded by literature that they will eventually come upon it themselves without ever having been taught it.  James’ drawings J. D. 7-10 on page 26 are another example of this, but this time they are Compounds and Aggregates that have begun to resemble letters and/or numbers.  I observed James creating a series of numbers with blocks in the classroom the week after he did this series of drawings. He built numbers one, two, and three with these blocks and his number two was backwards.  Since most of the shapes from these drawings resemble the backwards two that he built just last week, it seems as though they are numbers and not letters.  However, even if this is the case, it is still a form of self-created literacy development in that he taught himself how to draw the numbers and build them with blocks, further developing his own vocabulary.  With time, I imagine that the rest of the students will create their own ways of expressing their own literary development, whether or not it is through their drawings.

            Although I did follow the development of some of these children further than others it was only because they happen to be developmentally further down the line than others and not because their work is necessarily “better” than the others.  When left alone each child’s art will develop at his or her own pace naturally, so it is very important for teachers to “accept every [piece of art] made with good grace and …to [not] evaluate its worth” (Kellogg 156).  She also says that “when adults have a consistently approving reaction to all the work made, without overemphasizing appreciation of what they like best, the child functions best in art” (69).  As you can see from the examples that I have used from such a limited, yet incredibly varied set of children’s drawings and paintings, when children are let alone to make art they come up with their own unique styles and they do so at their own pace, without being forced into a higher developmental stage than they are ready for.  What results is the self-discovery that each child gets to go through on his way to becoming an artist.