ABSTRACT
All the traditional theories of children’s drawing contain weaknesses that have prevented any of them from being accepted as definitive. The most popular theory, that young children draw what they know rather than what they see, has just enough truth in it to be thoroughly misleading. One of the weaknesses of this theory is that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to separate seeing from knowing. Costall, quoting a comment by Arnheim, said:
There are also other weaknesses with this theory. One is that making a simple distinction between what children know and what they see results in
a two-stage theory of drawing that is far too crude to capture the complex changes in children’s drawings that take place during the course of development. Consider, for example, the developmental changes in children’s drawings of people illustrated in Fig. 8.1, and their drawings of tables illustrated in Fig. 8.2. Neither of these developmental sequences divides easily into two distinct stages. Similarly, in the sequence of children’s drawings of an unfamiliar object illustrated in Fig. 1.5, which covers an age range of 5 to 12 years, drawings showing possible views (“what children see”) alternate with drawings showing impossible views (“what children know”). Figure 1.5b, which shows a possible view, is followed by Fig. 1.5c that shows an impossible view. Figure 1.5d, which shows another possible view, is then followed by Fig. 1.5e that shows another impossible view, and finally by Figs. 1.5f and 1.5g that show two more possible views, one ambiguous and one unambiguous. Where does knowing stop and seeing begin in this developmental sequence? The traditional theory of knowing and seeing is utterly inadequate to account for these changes. In contrast, all three sequences can be completely described in terms of the progressive acquisition of increasingly effective representational rules.
