Children's Ways: Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matterSully, James
Science
Children's Ways: Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter
Sully, James
Child development; Child psychology
As soon as the hand acquires a certain readiness in drawing lines and
closed lines or "outlines," and begins to connect the forms produced
with the necessary movements, drawing takes on a more intentional
character. The child now aims at constructing a particular linear
representation, that of a man, a horse, or what not. These first
attempts to copy in line the forms of familiar objects are among the
most curious products of the child's mind. They follow standards and
methods of their own; they are apt to get hardened into a fixed
conventional manner which may reappear even in mature years. They
exhibit with a certain range of individual difference a curious
uniformity, and they have their parallels in what we know of the first
crude designs of the untutored savage.
_The Human Face Divine._
It has been wittily observed by an Italian writer, Signor Corrado Ricci,
that children in their drawings reverse the order of natural creation by
beginning instead of ending with man. It may be added that they start
with the most dignified part of this crown of creation, _viz._, the
human head. A child's attempt to represent a man appears commonly to
begin by drawing a sort of circle for the front view of the head. A dot
or two, sometimes only one, sometimes as many as five, are thrown in as
a rough way of indicating the features.
I speak here of the commoner form. There are however variations of this.
Some children draw a squarish outline for head, but these are children
_at school_. In one case, that of a little girl aged three years four
months, the outline was not completed, the facial features being set
between two vertical columns of scribble, which do duty for legs (Fig.
3). Sometimes the features are simply laid down without any enclosing
contour; and this arrangement appears not only in children's drawings
but in those of savage adults.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.[12]]
[12] Reproduced from the article already referred to, by Mr. Lukens.
The representation of the head sometimes appears alone, but a strong
tendency to bring in the support of the legs soon shows itself. This
takes at first the crude device of a couple of vertical lines attached
to the head (see Fig. 4).
[Illustration: Fig. 4.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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