The Complete Guide to Children's Drawings: Accessing Children‘s Emotional World through their Artwork
also see signs of the extraordinary fears which caused sleeping disorders, constipation and irregular eating patterns. Socially, she began to evidence adjustment difficulties and at home she kept clinging to her parents. After the parents were advised to move her to a kindergarten with fewer children, her scribbles showed a change for the better.
To conclude, the graphic complexity of every scribble (which makes it appear senseless) requires thorough scrutiny of a large number of drawings before any comparisons can be made. Such comparisons can offer important insights into the child’s temperament, behavior patterns, difficulties and fears he may be experiencing.
The Emotional Significance of Drawing: Process and Drawing Tool
The artistic experience is basically a sensory experience combining multiple modalities. Through this experience, the child structures his worldview. For the child, drawing is friendlier and more comprehensive than verbal expression; through drawing the child can create something out of nothing. This is in fact the starting point of the creative experience in art therapy: through creative experience, the child undergoes a process of trial and error which enables him to discover and express his inner world. Children “use” drawings as a way of sublimating aggressive drives and relieving stress. They let their imagination run wild and draw the world as they see it, rather than as an accurate copy of reality.
Sitting Position
At first, you must pay attention to the child’s sitting position: it is important for the child to feel comfortable, with the table and chair adjusted to his size. Don’t be upset if you see your child drawing lying down, because this position enables him to place more of their body’s surface on the floor, and often helps them concentrate on their drawing. Some children will prefer this position also in older ages and you will find them doing their homework on the floor, but in most cases this is a fleeting phenomenon.
For some children, lying down is preferred because their shoulder muscles are too weak for them to draw while sitting or because they have difficulty focusing their eyes and thus want to draw as close as possible to the page.
Page Size
The size of the page is also significant for the child. Above all, it should fit his physical size and experience in drawing. At the scribbling stage, it is recommended to use large pages. At this stage, the child is unaware of the page’s boundaries and it is important for him to delve into the experience of drawing. When the child begins to develop his drawing skill, he can use smaller pages and even let him try small notes that will encourage him to concentrate and develop fine motor skills.
Naturally, there is no mandatory age-to-page-size ratio, and it is always recommended to combine various page sizes so as to allow the child to hone his skills in drawing small details as well as to draw in a more uninhibited way. However, you should observe the degree of confidence and satisfaction experienced by the child: when an unconfident child is asked to draw on a large page, he might give up before even starting. Thus, make sure the child is exposed gradually to various stimulations and let him pick the page size that is best for him.
Drawing Tool
Drawing tools also play an important role in the process, and each exposes the child to a different experience. First, the way the drawing tool is held can indicated disabilities that could become manifested in a later age. For instance, children with low muscle tone will grasp the tool tightly within a fisted hand. Note, however, that you must be wary of rushing into conclusions, because children undergo multiple change processes at this age. In any case, if drawing requires the child to apply too much force, which wears him down and prevents him from drawing as much as he would have liked to, you are advised to seek professional diagnosis.
Markers are quite mechanic in nature, particularly the thinner markers that emit a screeching sound when applied to the paper. Usually, children aged 4–5 prefer markers, as you can see in figure 1-24. It is important for them to be precise when coloring the house drapes or the monster’s eyes.
Figure 1-24:Drawing with markers
Some children who prefer markers overwhelmingly and consistently will become children who need certainty and control over events, and will often express anger (at themselves and at the page) if they haven’t managed to draw as accurately as they had intended.
Using markers requires greater manipulative skill, and stresses color variety over working deep into the page. Therefore, they will be preferred by children with a strong need for neatness as an integral part of the creative process.
Pastel crayons introduce the child to a completely different experience. Using pastels requires greater muscular effort since the crayon has to be pressed down on the page to produce results. The child’s active contribution to the creative process makes him an integral part of the artwork. Some children pay the utmost attention to painting with pastel crayons, devoting effort and concentration to the task, while others treat the final result with indifference, show no interest in the painting and paint with low manual pressure and without attention to detail so as to “get it over with”. Essentially, pastel crayons produce less accurate paintings, such as the example in figure 1-25, and challenge the child to resolve this issue or simply enjoy the strengths of this medium.
Figure 1-25:Drawing with pastel crayons
Pastel crayons invite the child to get dirty as part of the creative process, and provide an experience of depth in addition to the color variety. Thus, children who prefer pastel will work in several layers and explore this tool’s potential to conceal and reveal.
Gouache paints, like all types of finger paints, offer the perfect sensory experience. Whether the child uses a brush or his fingers, the soft sense of paint flowing over the page offers a combined sensory-kinesthetic-emotional sensation. Naturally, painting in gouache requires the child to cope with neatness issues. Some children will refuse to use these paints at all, because they don’t want to be messy.
When working with these children, it is important to give them the protections they need (for example, by giving them a towel to wipe their hands), but it is also important to invite them to continue exploring the sensory experience, which in many cases can also lead to behavioral change.
Children who show clear preference for gouache could use this experience to learn how to effortlessly take control of the entire page area, but also to maintain its boundaries and improve their gross motor skills.
What to Look for in Children’s Drawings?
For the child, drawing is a daily language and additional medium of communication. The child has never been taught how to draw before, and he advances through the developmental stages freely and intuitively. As in any language, the language of art combines social codes that make it understandable and “spoken”, together with private codes borrowed from the child’s inner world which mark his artwork as unique.
In order to gain a broad perspective on the child’s inner world and self-image based on his drawings, I recommend analyzing at least 25 samples drawn in various techniques (gouache, pastel, markers, pencils, etc.). Analyzing fewer drawings will provide limited indications, representing passing moods rather than broad trends. Accordingly, it is also important to analyze drawings made over a period of at least six months, so as to provide a clear picture of the child’s emotional world and enable comparison to earlier periods.
Interpreting the drawing requires assessing a wide variety of phenomenon, from the way the drawing has been executed and the child’s various artistic choices, through his use of the page area, line pressure and color selection, to analysis of the child’s verbalizations during and after the drawing.
The drawing environment is also significant to the diagnosis: children draw in different styles and with different materials at home and at kindergarten. Drawing at kindergarten next to other children is naturally different than drawing at home, alone or with a parent. Bear in mind that kindergarten drawings are not always spontaneous,