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
The arms, being the thin lanky members, are, like the legs, commonly
represented by lines. The same thing is noticeable in the drawings of
savages. They appear, in the front view of the figure, as more or less
stretched out, so as to show beyond the trunk; and their appearance
always gives a certain liveliness to the form, an air of joyous
expression, as if to say, "Here I am!" (see Fig. 13, the drawing of a
boy of six).
In respect of their structure a process of gradual evolution may be
observed. The primal rigidity of the straight line yields later on to
the freedom of an organ. Thus an attempt is made to represent by means
of a curve the look of the bent arm, as in the accompanying drawing by a
boy of five (Fig. 14). In other cases the angle of the elbow is
indicated. This last improvement seems to come comparatively late in
children's drawings, which here, as in other respects, lag behind the
crudest outline sketches of savages.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.]
[Illustration: Fig. 15.]
The mode of insertion or attachment of the arms is noteworthy. Where
they are added to the trunkless figure they sometimes appear as emerging
from the sides of the head, as in a drawing by a boy of two and a half
years (see Fig. 15), but more commonly, from the point of junction of
the head and legs (see above, Fig. 7 (_b_)). After the trunk is added
they appear to sprout from almost any point of this. It may be added
that their length is often grotesquely exaggerated.
The arm in these childish drawings early develops the interesting
adjunct of a hand. Like other features this is apt at first to be
amusingly forced into prominence by its size.
The treatment of the hand illustrates in a curious way the process of
artistic evolution, the movement from a bare symbolic indication towards
a more life-like representation. Thus one of the earliest and rudest
devices I have met with, though in a few cases only, is that of drawing
strokes across the line of the arm to serve as signs of fingers (Fig.
16).
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Humpty Dumpty on the wall.]
[Illustration: Fig. 17.]
It is an important advance when the branching lines are set in a
bunch-like arrangement at the extremity of the arm-line. From this point
the transition is easy to the common "toasting-fork" arrangement, in
which the finger-lines are set on a hand-line (see above, Figs. 8 and 7
(_b_)). From this stage, again, there is but a step to the first crude
attempt to give contour first to the hand alone, as in Fig. 13, and then
to hand and fingers, as in Figs. 11 and 17.
Various odd arrangements appear in the first attempts to outline arm and
hand. In one, which occurs not infrequently, a thickened arm is made to
expand into something like a fan-shaped hand, as in Fig. 18.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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