The message of this book is a simple one: children learn to draw by acquiring increasingly complex and effective drawing rules. In this regard, learning to draw is like learning a language, and as ...with language children use these rules creatively, making infinite use of finite means. Learning to draw is thus, like learning a language, one of the major achievements of the human mind.
Theories of perception developed in the second half of the 20th century enable us to construct a new theory of children's drawings that can account for their many strange features. Earlier accounts contained valuable insights, but recent advances in the fields of language, vision, philosophy, and artificial intelligence now make it possible to resolve the many contradictions and confusions inherent in these early writings.
John Willats has written a book that is accessible to psychologists, artists, primary and junior schoolteachers, and parents of both gifted and normal children.
Contents: Preface. Introduction. Part I: Studying Children's Drawings. Contradictions and Confusions. In the Beginning. The Early Years. Where Do We Go From Here? Regions. Lines, Line Junctions, and Perspective. Part II: Mental Processes. "Seeing in" and the Mechanism of Development. The Drawing Process. Part III: Child Art. Children as Artists. Art Education. Summing Up. Appendix.
"This new, pioneering book addresses the typical questions about this complex research area, but does it in a way that feels more convincing than most other writings on the subject. It is an especially rigorous look, which takes nothing for granted and does not hesitate to doubt even the most sacred assumptions about children's drawings." —Leonardo Digital Reviews
Through the use of case studies and more than 150 illustrations of patient artwork, this book summarizes findings of cognitive development and art therapy practices.
Forward by Cathy Malchiodi. ...Acknowledgements. Contents. Part 1: Stimulus Drawing Assessments. Introduction. Three Stimulus Drawing Assessments. Part 2: Qualitative Studies. Consistencies and Humor. Emotionally Disturbed, Hospitalized, and Sexually Abused Individuals. Joey, a Child with Learning Disabilities. Hearing Impaired Children and Adolescents. Adults and Adolescents with Brain Injuries. Developmental Art Procedures. Part 3: Quantitative Studies. Atypical Children, Adolescents, Adults. Age, Gender, and Cultural Differences among Typical Children, Adolescents, and Adults. Concluding Observations. References.
This book explores how young children learn to draw and draw to learn, at home and school. It provides support for practitioners in developing a pedagogy of drawing in Art and Design and across the ...curriculum and provide advice for parents about how to make sense of their children's drawings. This book is enlivened with the real drawings of seven young children, collected over three years. These drawings stimulated dialogues with the children, parents and practitioners whose voices are reported in the book. The book makes a powerful argument to radically re-think the role of drawing in young children's construction of meaning, communication and sense of identity. It provides insights into the influence of media and consumerism, as reflected in popular visual imagery, and on gender identity formation in young children. This book contains the following nine chapters: (1) Young children making meaning at home and school; (2) Young children learning to draw; (3) Overview of the project; (4) Luke's story; (5) Simon's story; (6) Holly's story; (7) Lianne's story; (8) Themes from the seven children's drawings; and (9) Implications.
A celebration of the talents and insights of children on the autism spectrum, The Hidden World of Autism presents a collection of writings and drawings contributed by 21 autistic children. The ...children's work covers topics that are of primary importance in understanding some of the common experiences that children with autism, and their families, go through. These include life before diagnosis, friendships, relationships, feelings, bullying and the future. A key characteristic of having autism is the inability to express emotions; but too often that prevents children with autism from being listened to. This book gives them both a voice and a forum for creative expression and provides direct insight into what having autism means for the children themselves and how they feel about their experiences. This unique collection provides invaluable insights into the autistic experience for professionals, families and friends of children with autism, as well as the children themselves.
This article compares the place of line in the later art teaching of Ruskin with its role in the South Kensington system , the national art training scheme developed from the late 1830s under the ...auspices of the British Board of Trade. It focuses especially on Ruskin s influence on Ebenezer Cooke, a pupil of his at the Working Men s College in the 1850s and later, like Ruskin, a vigorous opponent of South Kensington. Starting from a heated public exchange of 1875 involving Ruskin, Cooke and an executant of the government system, William Bell Scott, the article examines Ruskin s theoretical and practical revaluation of line between the publication of The Elements of Drawing (1857) and of his second drawing manual, The Laws of Fésole (1877–78). It then shows how Cooke combined Ruskin s earlier analyses of curvature in nature and ornament and his growing sense of outline as a locus of interdisciplinary thought and moral expression with insights into child nature gleaned from the pedagogy of Pestalozzi and Froebel and from contemporary British psychology, thus developing an original understanding of, and method of teaching, elementary drawing founded on the ovate general forms which in Cooke s view formed a link between nature and historically and developmentally primitive design.
