Children's Ways / Being selections from the authors "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter

CHAPTER XII. FIRST PENCILLINGS.

A child's first attempts at drawing are not art proper, but a kind of play. As he sits at the table and covers a sheet of paper with line-scribble he is wholly self-centred, "amusing himself," as we say, and caring nothing about the production of a thing of Æsthetic value.

Yet even in this infantile scribbling we see a tendency towards art-production in the effort of the small draughtsman to make his lines indicative of something to another's eyes, as when he bids his mother look at the "man," "gee-gee," or what else he cheerfully imagines his scribble to delineate. Such early essays to represent objects by lines, though commonly crude enough and apt to shock the Æsthetic sense of the matured artist by their unsightliness, are closely related to art, and deserve to be studied as a kind of preliminary stage of pictorial design.

In studying what is really a large subject it will be well for us to narrow the range of our inquiry by keeping to delineations of the human figure and of animals, especially the horse. These are the favourite topics of the child's pencil, and examples of them are easily obtainable.

As far as possible I have sought spontaneous drawings of quite young children, viz., from between two and three to about six. In a strict sense, of course, no child's drawing is absolutely spontaneous and independent of external stimulus and guidance. The first attempts to manage the pencil are commonly aided by the mother or other instructor, who, moreover, is wont to present a model drawing, and, what is even more important at this early stage, to supply model-movements of the arm and hand. In most cases, too, there is some slight amount of critical inspection, as when she asks, "Where is papa's nose?" "Where is doggie's tail?" In one case, however, I have succeeded in getting drawings of a little girl who was carefully left to develop her own ideas. Even in the instances where adult supervision is apt to interfere, we can, I think, by patient investigation distinguish traits which are genuinely childish.

A child's drawing begins with a free aimless swinging of the pencil to and fro, which movements produce a chaos of slightly curved lines. These movements are purely spontaneous, or, if imitative, are so only in the sense that they follow roughly the directions of another's pencil.

In this first line-scribble there is no serious intention to trace a particular form. What a child seems to do in this rough imitation of another's movements is to make a tangle of lines, more or less straight, varied by loops, which in a true spirit of play he makes believe to be the semblance of "mamma," "pussy," or what not, as in Fig. 1 (a) and (b). Possibly in not a few cases the interpretation first suggests itself after the scribble, the child's fancy discerning some faint resemblance in his formless tangle to a human head, a cat's tail, and so forth.

Fig. 1a Fig. 1 (a).[11]

Fig. 1b Fig. 1 (b).[11]

This habit of scribble may persist after a child attempts a linear description of the parts of an object. Thus a little girl in her fourth year when asked to draw a cat produced the two accompanying figures (Fig. 2 (a) and (b)).

Fig. 2a Fig. 2 (a).

Fig. 2b Fig. 2 (b).

Here it is evident we have a phase of childish drawing which is closely analogous to the symbolism of language. The form of representation is chosen arbitrarily and not because of its likeness to what is represented. This element of symbolic indication will be found to run through the whole of childish drawing.

As soon as the hand acquires a certain readiness in drawing lines and closed lines or "outlines," and begins to connect the forms produced with the necessary movements, drawing takes on a more intentional character. The child now aims at constructing a particular linear representation, that of a man, a horse, or what not. These first attempts to copy in line the forms of familiar objects are among the most curious products of the child's mind. They follow standards and methods of their own; they are apt to get hardened into a fixed conventional manner which may reappear even in mature years. They exhibit with a certain range of individual difference a curious uniformity, and they have their parallels in what we know of the first crude designs of the untutored savage.

The Human Face Divine.

It has been wittily observed by an Italian writer, Signor Corrado Ricci, that children in their drawings reverse the order of natural creation by beginning instead of ending with man. It may be added that they start with the most dignified part of this crown of creation, viz., the human head. A child's attempt to represent a man appears commonly to begin by drawing a sort of circle for the front view of the head. A dot or two, sometimes only one, sometimes as many as five, are thrown in as a rough way of indicating the features.

I speak here of the commoner form. There are however variations of this. Some children draw a squarish outline for head, but these are children at school. In one case, that of a little girl aged three years four months, the outline was not completed, the facial features being set between two vertical columns of scribble, which do duty for legs (Fig. 3). Sometimes the features are simply laid down without any enclosing contour; and this arrangement appears not only in children's drawings but in those of savage adults.

The representation of the head sometimes appears alone, but a strong tendency to bring in the support of the legs soon shows itself. This takes at first the crude device of a couple of vertical lines attached to the head (see Fig. 4).

Fig. 3 Fig. 3.[12]

Fig. 4 Fig. 4.

Coming now to the mode of representing the face, we find at an early stage the commencement of an attempt to differentiate the features. In drawings of children of three we frequently see that while the eyes are indicated by dots the nose is given as a short vertical line. Similarly when the mouth appears it does so commonly as a horizontal line. We notice that more attention is given to the problem of placing a feature than to that of making a likeness of it. Indeed this first drawing is largely a pointing out or noting down of features without any serious effort to draw them. The representation is a kind of local description rather than a true drawing. Curious differences appear in respect of the completeness of this linear noting or enumerating of features. The nose more particularly appears and disappears in a capricious way in the drawings of the same child.

Fig. 5 Fig. 5.

Fig. 6 Fig. 6.

Odd differences, reflecting differences of intelligence, show themselves in the management of this diagram of the human face. One child, a Jamaica girl of seven, went so far as to draw the face with only one eye (Fig. 5). Again though, as I have said, a child will try to give a correct local arrangement, for example putting the nose between and below the eyes, he does not always reach accuracy of localisation. Many children habitually set the two eyes far up towards the crown of the head, as in Fig. 6. When the features begin to be represented by something more like a form we find in most cases a curious want of proportion. The eye, for instance, is often greatly exaggerated; so is the mouth, which is sometimes drawn right across the face, as in Fig. 6.

As the drawing progresses we note a kind of evolution of the features. In the case of the eye, for example, we may often trace a gradual development, the dot being displaced by a small circle or ovoid, this last supplemented by a second outer circle, or by an arch or pair of arches. In like manner the mouth, from being a bare symbolic indication, gradually takes on form and likeness. There appears a rude attempt to picture the mouth cavity and to show those interesting accessories, the teeth. The nose, too, tries to look more like a nose by help of various ingenious expedients, as by drawing an angle, a triangle, and a kind of scissors arrangement in which the holders stand for the nostrils (see Fig. 7 (a) and (b); compare above, Fig. 4).

Fig. 7a Fig. 7 (a).

Fig. 7b Fig. 7 (b).

Ears, hair, and the other adjuncts come in later as after-thoughts. Much the same characteristics are observable in the treatment of these features.

The Vile Body.

At first, as I have observed, the trunk is commonly omitted. The indifference of the young mind to this is seen in the obstinate persistence of the first scheme of a head set on two legs, even when two arms are added and attached to the sides of the head. Indeed a child will sometimes complete the drawing by adding feet and hands before he troubles to bring in the trunk (see Fig. 8).

From this common way of spiking the head on two forked or upright legs there occurs an important deviation. The contour of the head may be left incomplete, and the upper part of the curve be run on into the leg-lines, as in the accompanying example by a Jamaica girl (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8 Fig. 8.

Fig. 9a Fig. 9 (a).[13]

Fig. 9b Fig. 9 (b).

Fig. 9c Fig. 9 (c).

The drawing of the trunk may commence in different ways. Sometimes a lame attempt is made to indicate it by leaving space between the head and the legs, that is, by not attaching the legs to the head. Another contrivance is where the space between the legs is shown to be the trunk by shading or by drawing a vertical row of buttons. In other cases the contour of the head appears to be elongated so as to serve for head and trunk. A better expedient is drawing a line across the two vertical lines and so marking off the trunk (see Fig. 9 (a) to (d)). In drawings made by Brazilian Indians we see another device, viz., a pinching in of the vertical lines (see Fig. 9 (e)).

Fig. 9d Fig. 9 (d).

Fig. 9e Fig. 9 (e).

After the trunk has been recognised by the young draughtsman he is apt to show his want of respect for it by making it absurdly small in proportion to the head, as in Fig. 10. It assumes a variety of shapes, triangular, rectangular, and circular or ovoid, this last being, however, the most common.

At this stage there is no attempt to show the joining on of the head to the trunk by means of the neck. When this is added it is apt to take the exaggerated look of caricature, as in Fig. 11.

Fig. 10 Fig. 10.

Fig. 11 Fig. 11.

A curious feature which not infrequently appears in this first drawing of the trunk is the doubling of the corporeal ovoid, one being laid upon the other. As this appears when a neck is added it looks like a clumsy attempt to indicate the pinch at the waist—presumably the female waist (see Fig. 12).

The introduction of the arms is very uncertain. To the child, as also to the savage, the arms seem far less important than the legs, and are omitted in rather more than one case out of two. After all, the divine portion, the head, can be supported very well without their help.

Fig. 12 Fig. 12.

Fig. 13 Fig. 13.

The arms, being the thin lanky members, are, like the legs, commonly represented by lines. The same thing is noticeable in the drawings of savages. They appear, in the front view of the figure, as more or less stretched out, so as to show beyond the trunk; and their appearance always gives a certain liveliness to the form, an air of joyous expression, as if to say, "Here I am!" (see Fig. 13, the drawing of a boy of six).

Fig. 14 Fig. 14.

Fig. 15 Fig. 15.

In respect of their structure a process of gradual evolution may be observed. The primal rigidity of the straight line yields later on to the freedom of an organ. Thus an attempt is made to represent by means of a curve the look of the bent arm, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 14). In other cases the angle of the elbow is indicated. This last improvement seems to come comparatively late in children's drawings, which here, as in other respects, lag behind the crudest outline sketches of savages.

Fig. 16 Fig. 16.—Humpty Dumpty on the wall.

Fig. 17 Fig. 17.

Fig. 18 Fig. 18.

The mode of insertion or attachment of the arms is noteworthy. Where they are added to the trunkless figure they sometimes appear as emerging from the sides of the head, as in a drawing by a boy of two and a half years (see Fig. 15), but more commonly, from the point of junction of the head and legs (see above, Fig. 7 (b)). After the trunk is added they appear to sprout from almost any point of this. It may be added that their length is often grotesquely exaggerated.

The arm in these childish drawings early develops the interesting adjunct of a hand. Like other features this is apt at first to be amusingly forced into prominence by its size.

The treatment of the hand illustrates in a curious way the process of artistic evolution, the movement from a bare symbolic indication towards a more life-like representation. Thus one of the earliest and rudest devices I have met with, though in a few cases only, is that of drawing strokes across the line of the arm to serve as signs of fingers (Fig. 16).

It is an important advance when the branching lines are set in a bunch-like arrangement at the extremity of the arm-line. From this point the transition is easy to the common "toasting-fork" arrangement, in which the finger-lines are set on a hand-line (see above, Figs. 8 and 7 (b)). From this stage, again, there is but a step to the first crude attempt to give contour first to the hand alone, as in Fig. 13, and then to hand and fingers, as in Figs. 11 and 17.

Various odd arrangements appear in the first attempts to outline arm and hand. In one, which occurs not infrequently, a thickened arm is made to expand into something like a fan-shaped hand, as in Fig. 18.

There is a corresponding development of the foot from a bare indication by a line to something like a form in which toes are commonly represented by much the same devices as fingers. In the better drawings, however, one notes signs of a tendency to hide the toes, and to indicate the notch between the heel and the sole of the boot.

Side Views of Things.

So far, I have dealt only with the child's treatment of the front view of the human face and figure. New and highly curious characteristics begin to appear when he attempts to give the profile aspect.

Fig. 19 Fig. 19.—A miner.

A child, it must be remembered, prefers the full face arrangement, as he wants to indicate all its important features, especially the two eyes. "If," writes a Kindergarten teacher, "one makes drawings in profile for quite little children, they will not be satisfied unless they see two eyes; and sometimes they turn a picture round to see the other side." This reminds one of a story told, I believe, by Catlin of the Indian chief, who was so angry at a representation of himself in profile that the unfortunate artist went in fear of his life.

At the same time children do not rest content with this front view. After a time they try, without any aid from the teacher, to grope their way to a new mode of representing the face and figure, which, though it would be an error to call it a profile drawing, has some of its characteristics.

The first clear indication of an attempt to give the profile aspect of the face is the introduction of the side view of the nose into the contour. The little observer is soon impressed by the characteristic, well-marked outline of the nose in profile; and the motive to bring this in is strengthened by his inability, already illustrated, to make much of the front view of the organ. The addition is made either by adding a spindle-like projection after completing the circle of the head, as in Figs. 6 and 7 (a), or more adroitly by modifying the circular outline. The other features, the eyes and the mouth, are given in full view as before.

It may well seem a puzzle to us how a normal child of five or six can complacently set down this self-contradictory scheme of a human head. How little any idea of consistency troubles the young draughtsman is seen in the fact that he will, not infrequently, reach the absurdity of doubling the nose, retaining the vertical line which did duty in the first front view along with the added nasal projection (see Fig. 19).

This appearance of the nose as a lateral projection is apt to be followed by a similar side view of the ear (as seen in Fig. 19), of the beard and other adjuncts which the little artist wants to display in the most advantageous way.

Some children stop at this mixed scheme, continuing to give the two eyes and the mouth, as in the front view, and frequently also the front view of the body. This becomes a fixed conventional way of representing a man. With children of finer perception the transition to a correct profile view may be carried much further. Yet a lingering fondness for the two eyes is apt to appear at a later stage in this development of a consistent treatment of the profile; a feeling that the second eye is not in its right place prompting the artist in some cases to place it outside the face (see Fig. 20 (a) and (b)).

Fig. 20a Fig. 20 (a).

Fig. 20b Fig. 20 (b).

Other confusions are apt to appear in these early attempts at drawing a man in profile. The trunk, for example, is very frequently represented in front view with a row of buttons running down the middle, though the head and feet seem clearly shown in side view. The arms, too, not uncommonly are spread out from the two sides of the trunk just as in the front view.

It would take too long to offer a complete explanation of these characteristics of children's drawings. I must content myself here with touching on one or two of the main causes at work.

First of all, then, it seems pretty evident that most children when they begin to draw are not thinking of setting down a likeness of what they see when they look at an object. In the first simple stage we have little more than a jotting down of a number of linear notes, a kind of rude and fragmentary description in lines rather than in words. Here a child aims at bringing into his scheme what seems to him to have most interest and importance, such as the features of the face, the two legs, and so forth. In the later and more ambitious attempt to draw a man in profile the old impulse to set down what seems important continues to show itself. Although the little draughtsman has decided to give to the nose, to the ear, and possibly to the manly beard and the equally manly pipe, the advantage of a side view, he goes on exhibiting those sovereign members, the two round eyes, and the mouth with its flash of serried teeth, in their full front-view glory. It is enough for him to know that the lord of creation has these members, and he does not trouble about so small a matter as our capability of seeing them all at the same moment. In like manner a child will sometimes, on first clothing the human form, exhibit arms and legs through their covering (see Fig. 21 (a) and (b)). All this shows that even at this later and decidedly "knowing" stage of his craft he is not much nearer the point of view of our pictorial art than he was in the earlier stage of bald symbolism.

Fig. 21a Fig. 21 (a) (from General Pitt Rivers' collection of drawings).

Fig. 21b Fig. 21 (b) (reproduced from a drawing published by Mr. H. T. Lukens).

Much the same kind of thing shows itself in a child's manner of treating the forms of animals, which his pencil is wont to attack soon after that of man. Here the desire to exhibit what is characteristic and worthy naturally leads at the outset to a representation of the body in profile. A horse is rather a poor affair looked at from the front. A child must show his four legs, as well as his neck and his tail. But though the profile seems to be the aspect selected, the little penciller by no means confines himself to a strict record of this. The four legs have to be shown not half hidden by overlappings but standing quite clear one of another. The head, too, must be turned towards the spectator, or at least given in a mixed scheme—half front view, half side view (see Fig. 22 (a) and (b)).

Fig. 22a Fig. 22 (a).—A horse.

Fig. 22b Fig. 22 (b).—A quadruped.

A like tendency to get behind the momentary appearance of an object and to present to view what the child knows to be there is seen in early drawings of men on horseback, in boats, railway carriages, houses, and so forth. Here the interest in the human form sets at defiance the limitations of perspective, and shows us the rider's second leg through the horse's body, the rower's body through the boat, and so forth.

The widespread appearance of these tendencies among children of different European countries, of half-civilised peoples, like the Jamaica blacks, as well as among adult savages, shows how deeply rooted in the natural mind is this quaint notion of drawing.

At the same time there are, as I have allowed, important differences in children's drawings. A few have the eye and the artistic impulse needed for picturing, roughly at least, the look of an object. I have lately looked through the drawings of a little girl in a cultured home where every precaution was taken to shut out the influences of example and educational guidance. When at the age of four years eight months she first drew the profile of the human face she quite correctly put in only one eye, and added a shaded projection for nose (see Fig. 23). In like manner she was from the first careful to show only one leg of the rider, one rein over the horse's neck, and so forth; and would sometimes, with a child's sweet thoughtfulness, explain to her mother why she proceeded in this way. Yet even in the case of this child one could observe now and again a rudiment of the tendency to bring in what is hidden. Thus in one drawing she shows the rider's near leg through the trouser; in another she introduces the front view of a horse's nostrils (if not also of the ears) in what is otherwise a drawing of the profile (see Fig. 24 (a) and (b)).

Fig. 23 Fig. 23.

Yet while children's drawings are thus so far away from those reproductions of the look of a thing which we call pictures, they are after all a kind of rude art. Even the amusing errors which they contain, though a shock to our notions of pictorial semblance, have at least this point of analogy to art, that they aim at selecting and presenting what is characteristic and valuable. In many of the rude drawings with which we have here been occupied we may detect faint traces of individual originality, especially in the endeavour to give life and expression to the form. To this it is right to add that some drawings of young children from two to six which I have seen are striking proofs of the early development now and again of the artist's feeling for what is characteristic in line, and for the economic suggestiveness of a bare stroke (see Fig. 25 (a) and (b)). When once a child's eye is focussed for the prettiness of things the dawn of Æsthetic perception is pretty sure to bring with it a more serious effort to reproduce their look. Among children, as among adults, it is love which makes the artist.

Fig. 24a Fig. 24 (a).

Fig. 24b Fig. 24 (b).

Fig. 25a Fig. 25 (a) (drawn by a boy aged two years one month).

Fig. 25b Fig. 25 (b) (drawn by a girl of five and a half years).

FOOTNOTES

[1] From a paper by Mrs. Robert Jardine.

[2] The Invisible Playmate, p. 33 ff.

[3] I owe this and other observations on the treatment of dolls to Dr. Stanley Hall's curious researches.

[4] From an article on "The Philosophy of Dolls," Chambers' Journal, 1881.

[5] See my account of George Sand's childhood, in Studies of Childhood, chap. xii.

[6] The Development of the Intellect (Appleton & Co.), p. 155.

[7] I am indebted for these illustrations to an article by Dr. Stanley Hall on "The Contents of Children's Minds".

[8] Mrs. Meynell gives an example of this in her volume The Children ("The Man with Two Heads").

[9] See his poem, Anecdote for Fathers, showing how the practice of lying may be taught. ("Poems referring to the period of childhood.")

[10] From a published article by Mrs. Robert Jardine (compare above, pp. 16, 17).

[11] Fig. 1 (a) is a drawing of a man by a child of twenty months, reproduced from Prof. M. Baldwin's Mental Development, p. 84; Fig. 1 (b) is a drawing of a man by a child of two years three months, reproduced from an article on children's drawings by Mr. H. T. Lukens in The Pedagogical Seminary, vol. iv. (1896).

[12] Reproduced from the article already referred to, by Mr. Lukens.

[13] Fig. 9 (a) is a reproduction of a drawing of a girl of four and a half years, from Mr. Lukens' article.

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