Miss V. D. Blumnhardt is area orgoniser of the Arts and Crafts Branch, Wellington. She has played a prominent part in the formation of the new scheme for Arts and Crafts in the primary schools. She is at present visiting England, Europe and U.S.A. to study new methods of art teaching in those countries.

Drawing and painting stimulate children to grow towards a full adult life by giving them confidence in their own individual personalities and by building up their own individual awareness. They help to fit them for life as members of a community. Creative expression is the natural right of young children and is necessary for their development as well-rounded individuals.

Art not to be taught, but Natural Expression to be Encouraged

The art teaching in our schools is not concerned with teaching art for art's sake, but in teaching art as something which develops personality, and leads to a fuller life. The aim of this teaching should be to preserve in children their enjoyment of art as an integral part of their adult life.

Artistic activity must be considered not only as a form of expression concerned with satisfying the desire to create, but also as evidence of a child's emotions and innermost feelings. The art of children is not an unskilful attempt at copying; it is original expression, a definite symbol resulting from something in the mind of a child and blending with his past experience. This free expression is of extreme value to a child and should be encouraged. Later it will stimulate his observation and preserve his power of imagination until, in the adult, it will overflow into creative expression.

In order that children may get full benefit from drawing and painting we must avoid attempting to mould pupils to a standard pattern and a single style of work. The attitude of grown-ups should not be critical but should be directed towards providing the right atmosphere and environment for full freedom of expression. Children have remarkable powers of imagination and are sensitive to colour, balance and design. The art teacher needs to have tact, imagination and adaptability. There is no rigid textbook theory to rely on.

Social Communication and the Pleasure of Achievement

By means of this activity a child satisfies an inner longing to produce and to share his thoughts and feelings with others. Its value is partly social as it provides a child with a means of making contacts with others not possible in any other way.

Children develop a sense of selfreliance and display ingenuity in the use of materials. When delight in beauty and in freedom of emotional and aesthetic expression which drawing can provide becomes part of childhood, there is no telling what valuable work may result when the child grows up. Art enriches the mind as it grows to maturity by keeping it lively and sensitive. It enables us to discriminate and take a pleasure in creative work. Children love the feeling of having made something which is all their own. This sense of having made something helps to build a child's confidence in himself.

A Symbol of What Touches Most Keenly

When children first start to draw, their drawings have little relation to what is seen with the eye. Their drawings are symbols of those things which at the time have meaning and importance to them. Thus the human figure in a very young child's work may appear as a large head mounted on two legs. Although the child knows that the body is there and sees it, he draws only those parts of the body that he thinks important; the face because it speaks, the legs because they move about. Children do not depict what is before their eyes so much as their feelings and emotions in relation to things about them. At this early stage the materials provided should require the least technical skill, e.g., large paper, large stiff brushes and opaque water paint.

Mummy, by Shirley, age 4

Children's first marks on paper are scribbles. In calling them “scribble” we use a word that shows that their meaning may be hidden from us, as the scribble may bear no likeness to any of the objects we know. As drawings they appear disorderly and we may not be able to judge their signficance except with the help of the child. For him they have provided a full emotional release, and because they are thus so completely personal they differ from one child to another. A little later this scribbling becomes controlled and a child derives much greater enjoyment from his efforts. What hitherto has been a scribble is now given a name, or a story is told during the process of drawing.

During this transition stage it is most important that children, to develop page 58 normally, should be given praise and should be encouraged to continue. For example, if a child draws “Dad digging in the garden” one might ask whether he is working near the house, what he is working with, what he is wearing, etc. The child will usually respond by making more drawings as a result of the interest taken in his work.

The Allotment, by Pamela Dickens, age 15, pupil at a secondary school

This is Me!

At first the human figure always represents either himself or those nearest and best known. The subject matter at this stage will be “Me” and “Mine”, e.g., “Me and Mummy”, “Brushing My Teeth”, etc. Because children have not yet developed sufficiently for them to feel the connection between themselves and the things that surround them, every object is drawn and thought of separately and without relation to one another or the space around them.

Now related to Environment with Stress of the Emotionally Significant

Later, children develop a highly definite individual concept of human beings and their surroundings. Objects within pictures are now definitely related to one another, and although still drawn as symbols, the trees, houses, people, assume different sizes with some attempt at showing distance. Those things which children think are most important are drawn of larger size. When some object, or some part of it, is drawn in exaggerated size, we can assume that object has special significance, or that it has been the cause of some deeply felt emotion. When we know the causes of this disproportionate drawing, we see its value, not as attempt at reproduction but as true expression. From this we may gather the importance of not judging children's drawings from the viewpoint of an adult's idea of relative proportion.

When a child starts to put the things in his drawings on one or more base lines, we know that he has reached the stage of development at which he is beginning to feel his connection with what is outside or beyond himself. These base lines are used either to stand things on or to give surface character to the landscape. One line may indicate a valley and the other be bent up to form a hill. All the things on the hill, whether trees, houses, people, etc., will be drawn at right-angles to the hill.

Reality as Seen

Some children will not develop beyond this stage, and even when they become adults will still draw after this fashion. Many, however, will develop further and will reach by the age of 10 or 11 a stage when they draw things as they see them. This desire to make their drawings closely resemble what is seen is deeply rooted in a large number of adolescent children. Care should be taken that they do not get completely absorbed in mere photographic imitation. This is important since a work of art does not consist in copying appearance, but in creating a symbol for the artist's experience and reaction. All the parts of a child's picture at this stage are now inter-related and much more attention is given to detail. But it is still those parts which are emotionally significant which receive the greatest attention.

The Dangerous Age Keep the Creative Faculty Alive!

The children who will develop beyond this stage of drawing at the age of 12 or 13 comprise about one-third. The adolescent is still a child, though in many ways, in the development of his understanding and in his method of attacking problems, he is becoming an adult. But he is still essentially a child as is seen in the freedom of his imagination; for instance, a pencil can become a gun or an aeroplane as easily as the fairy's wand changes a pumpkin into a coach and horses. It is during this change from childhood to adolescence that those responsible are called upon to use the greatest care and tact.

It is now that a failure in sympathetic understanding may kill the chances of young people keeping and increasing their ability to respond in later life to aesthetic impulse. With adolescence comes a more conscious appreciation of the difference between materials, and a wider range of materials should be provided. This will help promote an appreciation of art which in adult life will bring the joy of discriminating between standards and styles of work in painting, drawing and all forms of design.

The change from the unconscious creative approach to this of critical awareness takes place by natural stages of development. If we allow this to take place we keep alive the ability to create and enjoy—the greatest gifts of mankind.