Children's drawing
Children's drawings are products made by children when they paint , draw and handle substances that are to be applied over a large area .
Children's drawings can provide information about child development and psychological issues .
Development of children's drawing
In order to better describe the painting development of children, individual phases are highlighted. The age data are not valid values for every child, as some children skip individual sub-phases in the development of their visual expressions or go back to an earlier one at times.
Track lubrication
At around 8-18 months of age, children like to “work on” liquid or pulpy substances without worrying about the results. The child learns to recognize the connection between his gesture and the trace that is left on the table.
Scribble
As soon as children are able to grasp and use a pen or something similar, i.e. from around the age of one, the scribbling phase begins. First, the movement is still mainly from the shoulder joint of (so-called Hiebkritzeln ; 12-16 months), what individual, indiscriminate strokes leaves on the scribbled underground, then from the elbow joint ( Schwingkritzeln ; 16-22 months), resulting in dense layers of lines that run in both directions (i.e. from bottom left to top right and back again), then from the wrist . This makes it possible to scribble in circles , which leaves ball-like traces. This phase is reached at around 21–23 months. The children are now also able to lift the pen and then put it back on again, i.e. to leave separate structures on the surface. The scribble phase ends around the age of three, when a closed circle or straight lines can be drawn. The children now start annotating and naming their drawings when they are around two and a half years old. The first intentions to display can be recognized. From the age of three there are also zigzag scribbles and isolated circular scribbles. An important development step is to slow down the signs. If the child can deliberately slow down their painting movements, they will be able to depict the first geometric shapes , such as semicircles or circles.
Cephalopods
The first structures on children's drawings that represent something recognizable for adults are the so-called " cephalopods ". They initially consist of a circle with sensor- like or tentacle-like structures that protrude in all directions - the so-called tactile body . It bears a resemblance to depictions of the sun in later pictures of children, but is viewed more as an expression of the current developmental situation of the child himself, who is experiencing in all directions and expanding his horizon . Later, the number of attached limbs is limited to two to four and a schematic face is inserted into the circle . Why the torso is regularly missing in these early depictions of people , even though much younger children already know that there is a belly and can show it to themselves and others, is controversial. Towards the end of the cephalopod phase, when the stick figures also develop, other shapes, such as rectangles , are added to the repertoire , so that other image content than just the "primordial creatures" can now be represented.
Preview phase
From around the age of four, children begin to compose their pictures more intensely. You are now working with coordinate lines such as B. a line or bar that represents the sky, and another that represents the ground, pay attention to differentiation and details such. B. curtains or eyelashes and relate numerous objects in the picture to one another. The choice of color is now also made consciously.
Readiness for work
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After the development stages, the scribble phase and the preview phase, the basic graphic characteristics of people and objects are worked out between the ages of five and seven. During this time the children's drawing becomes even richer in details and connections, but there are no more fundamentally new events.
In order to describe these manifestations of children's drawings, Karl Bühler used the term “work maturity”. The border zone of maturity marks the beginning of representational and expressive tendencies that continue in the further course of development. The individualization and clarification of the image concept is shown by the fact that the children's drawing becomes more unmistakable around school entry and each child creates their own specific form variants and image concepts based on their own experience as the result of individual development. As a result of the individualization of artistic activity, children's drawing gains in expression and communicative content. The child increasingly discovers the possibilities of the means of representation to describe the object graphically and concisely, and adapts the motifs and organizational structure of his picture depending on the emotional and motivational statement.
Another characteristic is the clarification of the message content. The child himself becomes aware of the communicative power of his drawings and registers the observer's intention to understand and readiness. If it does not feel understood in its message, the image motifs can be reorganized. During this time, the qualities of children's drawing develop, which make up the constitution of the phenomenon.
Scheme phase I
Typical for the following scheme phase I, which can be seen in around five to eight year olds, are the " x-ray images ", which depict several layers of the object, although it would actually be opaque. So you can see in these pictures z. B. a house from the outside and inside at the same time or the outline of the body under the clothes. The proportions of the objects are often not realistically recorded, but are based on the importance of what is depicted for the child.
Scheme phase II
From around the age of eight until the end of development at around twelve years of age, the children begin to strive for realistic proportions and the representation of three-dimensional space. So-called steep or horizon images are typical of this development step , in which objects that are further away are smaller and higher up in the image than objects that are supposed to be in the foreground . About ten-year-olds try their hand at perspective drawings of furniture , for example ; even later the bird's eye view is occasionally chosen, so that floor plans etc. Ä. Can be drawn. Often, towards the end of this phase, children tend to caricature and ironic - perhaps out of dissatisfaction with their attempts to depict things realistically.
When you go to school, a crisis in artistic creation often begins. The urge for a perfect, realistic representation is often intensified by censorship pressure in school . Now the child no longer paints for joy, but wants to meet their own and other's expectations and is under pressure to perform. In the event of devaluation or incorrect assessment of the aesthetic performance z. For example, a bad grade can cause a child to lose the joy of painting. In the worst case, his personality cannot fully develop. Children also need visual representation as an outlet for their emotions , to document their perception, to process experiences and to represent fictions .
Diagnostic aspects
Representation of relationship qualities
Primary school children portray relationships with people they like differently than relationships with people they dislike. S. Gramel (2008) was able to determine this in a study with over 500 children of primary school age. The children draw positive relationship persons closer to themselves than negative ones. Positive relatives smile more often in the pictures. The children also portray people they like as more complex than people they dislike. The sun is more common in positive images. The children also use their favorite colors more often in the positive relationship pictures. However, the pictures do not differ in terms of their joy of color. A line that divides the picture into different parts occurs mostly on negative pictures. Aggressive activities are depicted exclusively on negative pictures, physically aggressive actions predominantly by boys. Different relationship qualities can therefore be easily distinguished in children's pictures on the basis of the criteria presented.
Family in animals
The family in animals (based on Luitgard Brem-Gräser (1957)) is a projective research method in which the child is supposed to represent his family members as animals. In this way, children can depict conflicts in a family context without having to use language.
literature
- Jutta Ströter-Bender and Annette Wiegelmann-Bals (eds.): Historical and current children's drawings. A research workshop. Baden-Baden: Tectum Verlag 2017.
- Christoph Scholter: Children's drawings in the context of play and media worlds of the 1980s. Baden-Baden: Tectum Verlag 2017.
- Sarah Kass: Children's drawings from the Theresienstadt ghetto (1941–1945). A contribution to the culture of remembrance and legacy. Edited by the Jewish Museum in Prague. Marburg: Tectum Verlag 2015.
- Christa Seidel: Guidelines for the interpretation of children's drawings . Practice-oriented application in diagnostics, counseling, support and therapy Journal Verlag, A-9900 Lienz / Osttirol, ISBN 978-3-902128-30-0
- K. Eid, M. Langer, H. Ruprecht: Basics of art teaching. An introduction to art didactic theory and practice .
- R. Fleck-Banbgert: Children set standards . See and understand children's pictures .
- Ralph Giordano : Children's drawings from the Theresienstadt concentration camp . In: I'm nailed to this land. Speeches and essays about the German past and present. Knaur-TB 80024, Droemer Knaur, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-426-80024-1 , pp. 181-189.
- Sabine Gramel: The depiction of good and bad relationships in children's drawings - differentiation of different relationship qualities by drawing. Kovac Publishing House, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8300-3777-4 .
- AT THE. Lebeus: When children paint. Imagery and ego development .
- W. Reiss: Children's drawings. Paths to the child through his drawing .
- H.-G. Judge: The children's drawing. Development - interpretation - aesthetics .
- Martin Schuster: Children's drawings. How they come about, what they mean .
- D. Widlöcher: What a child's drawing reveals. Method and examples of psychoanalytic interpretation
- Gert Beyer, Maximilian Knötzinger: Perceiving and shaping . M. Knötzling Stam-Verlag, ISBN 3762300496
- Andreas Cieslik-Eichert, Claus Jacket: Creative action in technical schools for social education . Bildungsverlag E1NS, 2nd edition 2005, ISBN 3-8237-3466-0
- Handbook Art and Design Therapy and Practice for Working with Children's Groups, Dr. Braun Herder Verlag, ISBN 3451266172
- Berlin education program, State of Berlin Senate Department for Education, Youth and Sport Verlag das Netz, ISBN 3937785299
Web links
- Children's art - Ars infantis
- History of children's drawing Interview with art historian Barbara Wittmann about 500 years of the scientific history of children's drawing. (Video1h 27min)
- Nicole Gaul: About children's drawings. Development stages of children's drawing
- Development of children's drawings with a large gallery
- Development of drawing and painting for children aged 1-6 years, with a large picture archive
- Prehistoric and childlike drawing
- International Collection of Child Art (en)
Individual evidence
- ^ Kindergarten pedagokik
- ^ Karl Bühler: Outline of the intellectual development of the small child. 9th edition 1967, Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer, p. 164. DNB 456218556