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
There is a corresponding development of the foot from a bare indication
by a line to something like a form in which toes are commonly
represented by much the same devices as fingers. In the better drawings,
however, one notes signs of a tendency to hide the toes, and to indicate
the notch between the heel and the sole of the boot.
_Side Views of Things._
So far, I have dealt only with the child's treatment of the front view
of the human face and figure. New and highly curious characteristics
begin to appear when he attempts to give the profile aspect.
A child, it must be remembered, prefers the full face arrangement, as he
wants to indicate all its important features, especially the two eyes.
"If," writes a Kindergarten teacher, "one makes drawings in profile for
quite little children, they will not be satisfied unless they see two
eyes; and sometimes they turn a picture round to see the other side."
This reminds one of a story told, I believe, by Catlin of the Indian
chief, who was so angry at a representation of himself in profile that
the unfortunate artist went in fear of his life.
At the same time children do not rest content with this front view.
After a time they try, without any aid from the teacher, to grope their
way to a new mode of representing the face and figure, which, though it
would be an error to call it a profile drawing, has some of its
characteristics.
The first clear indication of an attempt to give the profile aspect of
the face is the introduction of the side view of the nose into the
contour. The little observer is soon impressed by the characteristic,
well-marked outline of the nose in profile; and the motive to bring this
in is strengthened by his inability, already illustrated, to make much
of the front view of the organ. The addition is made either by adding a
spindle-like projection after completing the circle of the head, as in
Figs. 6 and 7 (_a_), or more adroitly by modifying the circular outline.
The other features, the eyes and the mouth, are given in full view as
before.
It may well seem a puzzle to us how a normal child of five or six can
complacently set down this self-contradictory scheme of a human head.
How little any idea of consistency troubles the young draughtsman is
seen in the fact that he will, not infrequently, reach the absurdity of
doubling the nose, retaining the vertical line which did duty in the
first front view along with the added nasal projection (see Fig. 19).
This appearance of the nose as a lateral projection is apt to be
followed by a similar side view of the ear (as seen in Fig. 19), of the
beard and other adjuncts which the little artist wants to display in the
most advantageous way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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