ABSTRACT
Probably the most widely known theory of children’s drawings is the one that says: Young children draw what they know and older children draw what they see. This is usually associated with the theory of intellectual and visual realism formulated by Luquet in 1913, but its origins go much further back: to Barnes (1894), Sully (1895), and a classic study by Clark (1897). Clark asked children of various ages to draw an apple with a hatpin stuck through it, turned through a small angle so as to present a slightly oblique view. The resulting drawings were then divided into three groups (Fig. 2.1). In the first, produced by children with an average age of about 8 years, were drawings that consisted of a rough circle for the apple with the pin drawn “clear across.” In the second group, drawn by children with an average age of about 12 years, the pin was drawn “stopping on edges” so that the part of the pin hidden within the apple was not drawn but there was no effect of perspective. “Just such a drawing as a mechanic would make,” Clark (p. 287) commented. The oldest group of children, ages 12 to 16, drew the pin “as it appeared,” with part of the pin crossing one contour of the apple so as to give an effect of both perspective and foreshortening.
