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Memories: Your
History as an Artist
"When I was a child, I spake as a
child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I
became a man, I put away childish
T HE MAJORITY OF ADULTS IN THE WESTERN WORLD do n o t
progress in art skills much beyond the level of develop-
ment they reached at age nine or ten. In most mental and physical
activities, individuals' skills change and develop as they grow to
things."
adulthood: Speech is one example, handwriting another. The
— 1 Cor. 13:11
development of drawing skills, however, seems to halt unac-
countably at an early age for most people. In our culture, chil-
dren, of course, draw like children, but most adults also draw like
children, no matter what level they may have achieved in other
areas of life. For example, Figures 5-1 and 5-2 illustrate the persis-
tence of childlike forms in drawings that were done recently by a
brilliant young professional man who was just completing a doc-
toral degree at a major university.
I watched the man as he did the drawings, watched him as he
regarded the models, drew a bit, erased and drew again, for about
Fig. 5-1. twenty minutes. During this time, he became restless and seemed
tense and frustrated. Later he told me that he hated his drawings
and that he hated drawing, period.
If we were to attach a label to this disability in the way that
educators have attached the label dyslexia to reading problems,
we might call the problem dyspictoria or dysartistica or some
such term. But no one has done so because drawing is not a vital
skill for survival in our culture, whereas speech and reading are.
Therefore, hardly anyone seems to notice that many adults draw
childlike drawings and many children give up drawing at age nine
or ten. These children grow up to become the adults who say that
Fig. 5-2. they never could draw and can't even draw a straight line. The
same adults, however, if questioned, often say that they would
have liked to learn to draw well, just for their own satisfaction at
solving the drawing problems that plagued them as children. But
they feel that they had to stop drawing because they simply
couldn't learn how to draw.
A consequence of this early cutting off of artistic develop-
ment is that fully competent and self-confident adults often
become suddenly self-conscious, embarrassed, and anxious if
they are asked to draw a picture of a human face or figure. In this
situation, individuals often say such things as "No, I can't! What-
Fig. 5-5. Notice that the features are the same in each figure—including
the cat—and that the little hand symbol is also used for the cat's paws.
Around age four or five, children begin to use drawings to tell sto-
ries and to work out problems, using small or gross adjustments of
the basic forms to express their intended meaning. For example,
Fig. 5-6. in Figure 5-6, the young artist has made the arm that holds the
umbrella huge in relation to the other arm, because the arm that
holds the umbrella is the important point of the drawing.
Another instance of using drawing to portray feelings is a
family portrait, drawn by a shy five-year-old whose every waking
moment apparently was dominated by his older sister.
Even Picasso could hardly have expressed a feeling with
greater power than that. Once the feeling was drawn, giving form He then added his sister, with
to formless emotions, the child who drew the family portrait may teeth.
have been better able to cope with his overwhelming sister.
The landscape
Fig. 5-15. Realistic drawing by a twelve-year-old. Fig. 5-16. Realistic drawing by a twelve-year-old. At
Children aged ten to twelve are searching for ways to this stage, children's main effort is toward achieving
make things "look real." Figure drawing in particular realism. Awareness of the edges of the drawing sur-
fascinates adolescents. In this drawing, symbols from face fades and attention is concentrated on individual,
an earlier stage are fitted into new perceptions: Note unrelated forms randomly distributed about the page.
the front-view eye in this profile drawing. Note also Each segment functions as an individual element
that the child's knowledge of the chair back has been without regard for unified composition.
substituted for the purely visual appearance of the
back of the chair seen from the side.
Fig. 5-17. Children's unsuccessful attempts to draw a cube that "looks real."