Describe the typical sequence of development of drawing skills during early childhood.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Typically, drawing progresses through the following sequence:
1. Scribbles. Many children begin to draw during the second year. At first, the intended representation is contained in gestures rather than in the resulting marks on the page. Two-year-olds treat realistic-looking pictures symbolically, but they have difficulty interpreting line drawings.
2. First representational forms. Around age 3, children's scribbles start to become pictures. Often children make a gesture with the crayon, notice that they have drawn a recognizable shape, and then label it. Few 3-year-olds spontaneously draw so others can tell what their picture represents. When adults draw with children and point out resemblances between drawings and objects, preschoolers' pictures become more comprehensible and detailed. A major milestone in drawing occurs when children use lines to represent the boundaries of objects. This enables 3- and 4-year-olds to draw their first picture of a person. Fine-motor and cognitive limitations lead the preschooler to reduce the figure to the simplest form that still looks human-the universal "tadpole" image, a circular shape with lines attached. Four-year-olds add features, such as eyes, nose, mouth, hair, fingers, and feet, to their tadpole images.
3. More realistic drawings. Five- and 6-year olds create more complex drawings, containing more conventional human and animal figures, with the head and body differentiated. Older preschoolers' drawings still contain perceptual distortions because they have just begun to represent depth. Use of depth cues, such as overlapping objects, smaller size for distant than for near objects, diagonal placement, and converging lines, increases during middle childhood. Realism in drawings appears gradually, as perception, language, sustained attention, memory, and fine-motor capacities improve.