The Art of Children’s Imagination

Photo courtesy of istock photos

My nephew and his wife live in the inner city in a Sydney apartment. During the height of Covid -19 lockdown last year when schools were temporarily closed I was impressed how they did such an amazing job entertaining their two children 6 and 9 years old. Using their creative thinking they developed new daily activities in their apartment to keep their children’s minds and bodies active. From introducing a variety of things besides watching television, daily physical exercises from boxing, relay races, reading, games, educational work, fun and creative activities. Drawing was also an activity they enjoyed and are prolific at during this period.

Both children are fascinating to watch as they are regularly absorbed in intense concentration of either reading or drawing. Very disciplined for a 6 year and an 8 year old. But my fascination as a proud aunty and an arts teacher is in their drawing ability and artistic development as young children.On observation I had many questions of curiosity of how does children’s drawing ability evolve and where do their ideas come from?

Both of the children draw daily and for long periods. The young boy draws pencil illustrations of imaginary scenes of buses and hybrid animals .The young six year old constantly explores her imagination and most often found in deep concentration with her pencil drawing where images seem to flow in abundance and comes naturally to her. Her parents tell me they just let her draw.

Her parents send weekly drawings on Facebook to share with the family and we all `ooh’ and `aah’ at the amazing images of people, flowers. places and animals she manages to draw that flow out of her creativity. We observe that her sense of detail and perspective are impressive for someone of her age. Her father questions -“Is she a genius?”. The questions I probe are -‘What is going on in a young child’s mind and imagination and how can they have such sophisticated drawing skills and visual depiction?’.

The drawings look like they are drawn by someone older than their physical years. British author, speaker and international advisor on education, Sir Ken Robinson in his Ted Education Talk states it has more to do with her focus and the amount of time and hours doing this activity and cultivating her creativity why her drawing skills develop so fast. She gets immense pleasure dedicating her spare time away from school exploring her drawing skills and it is something her parents encourage and support her as she draws happily on her own.

According to an organisation, Planning with Kids and their analysis of children’s drawing stages they distinguish six clear and refined stages that a child might move through in their development of drawing. The first stage is usually simple scribbling and exploring making marks with drawing materials which is typical of a 2 to 3 year old. They enjoy the process and the effects of exploring line and colour through paint and the effects mixing it can make.

This is usually followed by the second stage of drawing of mechanical action of drawing a round shape of a circle. The third stage is a combination of stage one and two identified by the drawing becoming more representational and resemblance to something they know. They often tell you what they created on the page and are very excited that they have produced something recognisable on the page. Building on this in the fourth stage which is usually around four or five years old -faces and people start to appear. Sometimes arms and legs spring directly out of heads and not necessarily out of a trunk of a body.

Then as they progress on to the fifth stage at about five to seven years of age they start to sit on a baseline rather floating images and include motifs of houses, flowers , families and cars or whatever is prominent in the child’s mind at the time.The images are considered and depicted ‘as known’ rather than ‘as seen’. At the stage there is usually also no perspective or scale.

In the final and sixth stage perspective and scale start to appear at about eight to ten years of age and drawing may seem less spontaneous and can feel harder to draw. Other cognitive factors also come in to play where young people have an increasing ability to self-appraise their work and fitting in with their peers is becomes more important. This is interesting to consider how this starts to impacts on their level of creativity and individuality and their enjoyment of this kind of creative activity.

It appears that my young niece has just moved through the development of drawing stages more quickly because of the time she has spent drawing and exploring. At such a young age drawing also promotes sensory action and encourages physical movement and supports their muscle and hand-eye coordination.

In 2010, Dr Rosalind Arden of the King’s College Institute of Psychiatry, used a `Draw-a-Child Test devised in the 1920’s to assess children’s intelligence at the age of four. Drawing as Arden states is an ancient behaviour dating back 15,000 years ago. “Through drawing we are attempting to show someone else what’s in our mind”.

Arden continues to state ; “This capacity to reproduce figures is uniquely a human ability and a sign of cognitive ability in a similar way to writing, which transformed the human species ability to store information, and build a civilisation”.

The outcomes of the research and test results that were of no surprise correlated with the verbal and non verbal intelligence taken at the age of four. The research concluded that: “Drawing ability does not determine intelligence.There are other countless factors such as genetic and environmental , which all affect intelligence in later life”. Drawing is an outlet for communication and children’s artwork represents a view of their personalities, they learn to make meaning and freely express their thoughts, ideas and feelings visually.

Another interesting example is my eighteen year old daughter who developed an ability to draw mandalas free hand without a compass since she was about 10 years old. She has just reconnected with mandala drawing to relax her from her university studies. The sense of symmetry and doing it freehand still boggles my mind. Sometimes she may use a visual reference just by looking at it for a short time or develops a mandala design totally from her own imagination.

Mandala drawing by the author’s daughter, Maya Voysey

Some theorists say that there is no need to teach children to draw. The best way to teach them is to just provide them with the drawing materials and then let them express themselves freely. If drawing from life more importantly just encourage children to deep looking and observing of what ever they drawing and draw what they SEE rather than what THINK it looks like. As children grow and mature, their drawings become detailed and will reflect more of the world that is around them from their unique perspective and their own imagination.