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
Coming now to the mode of representing the face, we find at an early
stage the commencement of an attempt to differentiate the features. In
drawings of children of three we frequently see that while the eyes are
indicated by dots the nose is given as a short vertical line. Similarly
when the mouth appears it does so commonly as a horizontal line. We
notice that more attention is given to the problem of placing a feature
than to that of making a likeness of it. Indeed this first drawing is
largely a pointing out or noting down of features without any serious
effort to draw them. The representation is a kind of local description
rather than a true drawing. Curious differences appear in respect of the
completeness of this linear noting or enumerating of features. The nose
more particularly appears and disappears in a capricious way in the
drawings of the same child.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.]
Odd differences, reflecting differences of intelligence, show themselves
in the management of this diagram of the human face. One child, a
Jamaica girl of seven, went so far as to draw the face with only one eye
(Fig. 5). Again though, as I have said, a child will try to give a
correct local arrangement, for example putting the nose between and
below the eyes, he does not always reach accuracy of localisation. Many
children habitually set the two eyes far up towards the crown of the
head, as in Fig. 6. When the features begin to be represented by
something more like a form we find in most cases a curious want of
proportion. The eye, for instance, is often greatly exaggerated; so is
the mouth, which is sometimes drawn right across the face, as in Fig. 6.
As the drawing progresses we note a kind of evolution of the features.
In the case of the eye, for example, we may often trace a gradual
development, the dot being displaced by a small circle or ovoid, this
last supplemented by a second outer circle, or by an arch or pair of
arches. In like manner the mouth, from being a bare symbolic indication,
gradually takes on form and likeness. There appears a rude attempt to
picture the mouth cavity and to show those interesting accessories, the
teeth. The nose, too, tries to look more like a nose by help of various
ingenious expedients, as by drawing an angle, a triangle, and a kind of
scissors arrangement in which the holders stand for the nostrils (see
Fig. 7 (_a_) and (_b_); compare above, Fig. 4).
Ears, hair, and the other adjuncts come in later as after-thoughts. Much
the same characteristics are observable in the treatment of these
features.
_The Vile Body._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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