April 15, 1999
STAGES
OF DEVELOPMENT
AND EXPRESSION IN CHILDREN’S ART
By Brenda Ellis
"Does my child have any artistic talent?" "I think my child's pretty good at drawing, but I don't know." You are not alone if you do not know what to expect from students when it comes to art. Art is an area where there seems to be no guidelines to evaluate what it should look like at a specific age. This sends academic measuring and monitoring enthusiasts off to make some rules or to throw out the subject altogether. A common determiner many use, is to compare the drawing skills of one student to another, to see if a student is “artistic”. Making a comparison is not beneficial for either student, nor does it answer the questions one might have about a student’s skills or progress. Comparing may have a very negative effect, leading students to inappropriately consider themselves “not artistic”. It also leads to a wrong approach by emphasizing the final product rather than pursuing the creative aspects of making art. Comparison is difficult when students of the same age are in two different stages of artistic development, which is very often the case in real life. Yes, every student will progress through certain specific stages of development. It is through these stages that we can monitor each student’s progress. We monitor not by age or when students go in and out of a stage, but by their movement through each stage. The stages described here have been observed in numerous studies of children’s art for more than a century. Dr. Gaitskell recognizes stages of artistic production in the following paragraph of his book, Children and Their Art, published in 1958:
Expression in art relies upon both the unique personal qualities of its creator and the experiences he has had in life. Since children neither possess identical personalities nor react in wholly similar fashion to experience, their output in art must of necessity vary. Nevertheless, at certain periods of their general development, children tend to pass through several stages of artistic production and consequently to adopt recognizable modes of artistic expression.
-Dr.
Charles D. Gaitskell
The beginnings of artistic expression are characterized by manipulation of materials, referred to as the manipulation stage. This is done in an exploratory and random fashion (scribbles). Later the manipulation becomes increasingly organized until the individual gives a title to the marks made. This process can be illustrated in clay. At first clay is squeezed, pushed, pulled and chopped. Organizing and recognizing happens as the clay is rolled into a thin line and called a “snake”. It often happens that the individual does not begin work with a theme in mind but that the naming occurs after the material has taken shape. So manipulation is characterized first by random movement, then controlled movement that leads to making art on purpose (recognizable or nameable objects). This type of drawing or sculpting may begin at one to five years of age and usually changes around the time school begins. One should not feel a need to hurry the student through this stage. Manipulation is not a waste of time or materials, but is an educative process. It is a way of gaining skill in the use of tools and materials. As each new material is given, the individual will need to go through this stage again, no matter what their age. While a new student stays in this stage for a period of years, an advanced student may only take a few minutes to explore properties of a new material. The Horn Blower, above, is an example of a student, age three, who is making purposeful marks and naming the outcome. You can still see scribbling in parts of the picture. No specific shape has been developed for the arms and legs.
The second
stage, symbolic stage, is recognized by the 
use
of symbols. One develops a series of
distinct marks or symbols that stand for the objects in his or her experience.
To produce symbols one must be able to give marks the desired
characteristics and be able to do this at will.
It is common for someone at this stage to draw the same marks repeatedly.
It is important to supply them with an endless amount of paper and access to
their own marking tools: pencil, crayons, or markers.
The age at which this stage begins and ends varies greatly.
One may begin this stage at three to seven years and many never entirely
leave it. Being stuck at this stage
happens when one picks up false symbols and does not work toward making his or her
own images. The use of stick figures by an adult is an example of a person who has
not worked through the symbolism stage. It happens to many who believe at an early
age that art is not their "thing" or believe falsely that they have no
artistic talent. Dr. Gaitskell suggests that this is the stage when well-meaning
adults can get in the way of developing personal expression by insisting on
clean-looking work or objects that look “right”.
Some may insist coloring with only the correct colors, or some may “help”
by doing the project for the child to avoid “messes”.
A well meaning adult may demonstrate how to draw a cat in a symbolic way
that the student may never move out of, using a circle for a head, triangles for
the ears, three whiskers on each side of the nose, and so on.
In performing to the adult’s wishes, the student begins to rely upon
gimmicks: adult drawings to be filled in (coloring books) or prefabricated projects
to cut out and glue together (all looking the same in the end).
Someone relying on these types of things may cease to exert him or herself
in a search for adequate visual expression. In
contrast, those allowed to work in ways that please themselves move on to the next
stage of development by a strong desire to learn. In My Brother, artist age
five, above, we see the student has gone far past stick figures. On her own she has
developed arms that bend, a full neck, arms and legs, fully developed feet with the
correct amount of toes, and hands with the correct amount of fingers. Details
pertaining to her brother are important: the long hair, marks on face, cross
necklace, and glasses are all included.
the real thing. Expression at this
stage rests upon one’s interests as opposed to the wild, free use of line and
color seen in earlier stages. It is at
this time that many desire to know more about art techniques in order to get the
results they want. This is a good time
for art instruction that is open enough for the student to pursue goals set by
them. At this point they can begin to
learn the basics of art and use those elements and ideas that they find useful. If
students are encouraged to continue drawing, they will begin to add elements such
as form or value to their drawings. They
usually seek instruction or simply learn this pure observation.
This is an exciting stage. Many
students notice the elements naturally, yet they can be stuck in their ability to
improve. If this happens it is often
because they rely on the drawings of others (comic books, how-to draw books) for
references and have little understanding of working from direct observation or
dealing with compositional considerations. A
drawing (adult model of how to draw) gives them no opportunity to develop
necessary skills of direct observation of real life.
An art program that has students work from direct observation will help them
overcome this obstacle. In the work above, Self-Portrait, artist age 9,
we see the beginnings of reality: overlapping, hair over shoulders, body over
chair, one arm over the other. Value is attempted by filling in face, hair and
chair. It is a serious attempt at direct observation.
The
final stage reflects the processes used by mature productive artists.
Students, usually teenagers, can step into this stage if they have an
understanding of it. When they have
practiced art and built on the foundational aspects of art, they can begin to use
their technical proficiency for a specific purpose.
Exploring and expressing individual ideas becomes a part of the art-making
experience. More thought and
inventiveness is applied to what is created. Familiar
elements of art are manipulated to make specific statements, whether their own
(creative art) or those that have been defined for them (advertising or design).
These mature aspects of making art will carry them through the college-level
art experience and into adulthood. The Band,
artist age fourteen, shows observation from a photograph. The artist uses value
(light areas and dark) in the picture, varies line to make some areas stand out and
others recede, and fills the space of the page with marks. This is a band that was
of interest to him at the time so the picture also has personal meaning.
By knowing the end or the goal, parents can
relax and better deal with the stage each student is in now.
Simple drawing tools can be provided for the scribbles of those earliest
years, knowing that learning is taking place. Rejoicing
and praise is offered at the first signs of a resemblance to an object and the
purposeful making of an object, the final phase of the manipulation stage.
More praise is offered as the student figures out his or her own symbols for
dogs, dads and doors during the symbolic stage.
The student may repeat any symbol for years, but if it is their own, they
will step into the realism stage because they have learned to see and process
visual information for themselves.
Brenda Ellis is the publisher of www.ArtisticPursuits.com and author of the series, Artistic Pursuits, a comprehensive art program for home or classroom use, grades K-12. These user friendly books offer art instruction, art appreciation and art history in a self guided manner while encouraging artistic expression. She welcomes inquiries at alltheanswers@artisticpursuits.com.
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