Abbey Rosenblum

Child Drawing Analysis

February 25, 2014
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In this analysis activity, our groups task is to analyze a childs drawing and use our
own knowledge as well as theories to discover why this student has drawn what they did.
The drawing that our group chose to analyze is centered on a portrait of a girl. We do not
know if this girl is the artist herself, or a friend, or just a random figure of the artists
imagination. While it looks like the artist tried to draw some sorts of objects in the
background, it is difficult to distinguish what they are supposed to be, and if they would
add any additional meaning or clarity to the drawing.
According to Lowenfeld and Brittains stages of drawing, I believe that our
drawing is considered to be majority in the gang stage with a few characteristics from the
schematic stage. Her characteristics of drawing and some space representation fall in the
schematic stage, while her human figure representation and some space representation
falls into the gang stage. What places this drawing in the schematic stage is the presence of
a baseline (Lowenfeld and Brittain, 476). About two-thirds of the way up on the paper is a
squiggly horizontal line across the paper that separates the top half of the drawing from the
bottom half. It is hard to tell what the background is, but I can tell she used some sort of
baseline, which would put this in the schematic stage. Another characteristic of the
schematic stage found in this drawing is the use of two-dimensional objects (Lowenfeld
and Brittain, 476), because the girl in the drawing lies flat on the paper.
Most of this drawing, however, could be classified in the gang age stage. The gang
age stage of development typically occurs between the ages of nine and twelve. Regarding
space representation, the artist shows some knowledge of creating depth by having the
objects in the background be smaller than the girl. She wanted to give the affect that the
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drawing was not just flat, but that there was space between her and the objects in the
background.
Another characteristic of this drawing that puts it into the gang age stage is that
she shows little understanding of shade and shadow (Lowenfeld and Brittain, 477). She
uses many different shades of pencil in her background, but it is hard to tell if she was
trying to use shading or if thats just how the drawing ended up. If she was trying to
portray shading and shadowing, it is clear she needs more practice since it is difficult to tell
what she was trying to accomplish by the shading. Also, at first glance, it is hard to tell
where the background ends and her hair begins because they are the same shade. One of
the subcategories of each stage is the human
figure representation category. Since this
drawing is predominantly of a
human figure, most of the characteristics of this
drawing come from here. One characteristic
is that the artist shows greater awareness of
clothing details. She includes a design on the
T-shirt instead of just leaving it plain, which
shows growth in her drawing. Also, the girls
figure is not exaggerated, distorted,
or missing any body parts. The whole drawing of the girl is realistic and does not use any
straight lines as body parts. This coincides with another characteristic of the gang stage
that says body part retain their meaning when separated (Lowenfeld and Brittain, 477).
This means that if I were to take parts of the girl and separate them on the page, then they
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would still look like an arm, a leg, and a head. Finally, the last characteristic of this drawing
that puts it into the gang stage is that there is stiffness in the figure. The girl is drawn
standing with her arms out by her side. No human being in real life actually stands like this
with such stiffness to his or her body.
Marianne Kerlavage suggests another theory of stages of artistic development. Her
theory is a holistic view of interactions between cognitive, social, emotional, physical,
language and aesthetic domains of development (Luehrman and Unrath, 7). Through
analyzing this drawing, I have determined that this artist is in the Emerging Expertise
Stage. At this stage, children are moving away from using symbols in their artwork and
moving towards see art as a way to express creativity. According to Kerlavages theory,
we see the desire for making it look right increase, which intensifies as children move
into the [next stage](Luehrman and Unrath, 8). Instead of drawing the girl with stick
figures, shapes, and other symbols, the artist drew this girl in a realistic way. The artist
used what they knew from their social and environmental surroundings to draw a figure
that looked right.
Aside from these stages of drawing, this piece coincides with Wilson and Wilsons
principles of why childrens drawings look like they do. The fill-the-format principle states
that the page itself may affect where elements are placed (Wilson and Wilson, 61). This
could lead to the need to lengthen or shorten features so that they can fit in a way that
looks good on the paper. This principle applies to this drawing because the girls arms are
stretched to reach the bottom of the page. This could be because the artist is not confident
in his or her ability to draw hands, so instead they made sure the arms reached down far
enough so the artist would not have to draw them. Also, the artist made sure to cover
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every inch of the paper with pencil. This could have been to make the drawing look less
plain, since the only actual drawing in the piece is the girl figure. Filling up the page with
shading allowed the drawing to look less boring and bare.
From this analysis, I have learned ways to distinguish childrens artistic
development through stages. While some of these stages are generalized, I can apply them
to my students in my classroom, whether I am implementing an art assignment or a science
assignment. Knowing around what stages of drawing my students fall into will help me
better understand them as students. Understanding them as students will then help me
implement curriculum that I know is appropriate for my students. One consequence of
knowing these stages is that I could overgeneralize them to my class. This would not be
beneficial to me or my students, because if I overgeneralize these stages then I could have
some students lagging behind or not putting in their best effort, and I could have students
who are more advanced and are bored. Being able to analyze my students work will help
me become a better educator, and will help my students achieve their tasks.

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Works Cited

Lowenfeld,V., &Brittain, W.L. (1970). Creative and mental growth. New
York:MacMillan
Luehrman, M., & Unrath, K. (2006). Making theories of childrens artistic
development meaningful for pre-service teachers. Art Education, 59(3), 6-12.
Wilson, M., & Wilson, B. (1982). Teaching children to draw. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall