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The author of this article creates a semblance between Deleuze and Guattari's conception of a politics of desire and the four realities, as outlined by Brent and Marjorie Wilson. By making this theoretical move, the author advances the idea that children's drawing unfolds from one moment to the next through the assemblages of desire that are most immediate to its scene of production. The four realities--as material-compositions of desire--are exchanged and negotiated by those participating, the things and objects of which the scene is composed, the figuration of the scene itself, and the events and dramatizations that surface. As a result, the author argues that children's drawing is an assemblage of desire that is always assembling on behalf of the immediacy of its political and material conditions. Drawing from case study data collected during the spring of 2011 at Penn State's Saturday Art School, this theoretical essay leans curiously into those moments when the drawing of two children is leveraging and being leveraged in particular ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A leftward spatial bias in drawing placement was demonstrated by Heller (1991) using the draw-a-person test with right-handed American children. No such bias was observed in left-handed children who are assumed to be less lateralised than their right-handed peers. According to Heller the leftward spatial bias is primarily a reflection of the right hemisphere specialisation for spatial processing. However, an alternative explanation in terms of directional trends may be put forward. In the present study we first confirm Heller's findings of a handedness effect on drawing placement using the draw-a-tree task with a large sample of right- and left-handed French children aged 5–15 years (Exp. 1). We then provide evidence that a similar leftward bias occurs in right-handed Moroccan children aged 7–11 years with opposite script directionality and opposite preferred drawing movement directions (i.e., right-to-left directional trends) to the those of right-handed French children (Exp. 2). Taken together these findings suggest that directionality trends arising from learned cultural habits and motor preferences play little role in determining spatial bias in the centring of a single object drawn on a page. Rather there may be a cerebral origin for drawing single objects slightly on the left side of the graphic space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Concept: Few empirical studies have investigated the influence of teachers, parents and children on children's drawing experience. The current study aims to examine the attitudes and practices of these three key players that shape children's drawing experience. Method: A survey methodology was used, as typically found in previous research in this area. Participants were 270 5-14 year old children, 44 of their teachers of the National Curriculum for Art and Design, and 146 of their parents. The teachers and children participated in individual interviews and the parents completed a postal survey. Responses to most interview questions were transcribed and content analysis used to identify salient themes. The other questions involved responses on five-point scales, these were analysed by reporting percentages. Results: The findings are discussed in five sections. First, the positive perceptions of children's drawing behaviour and attitudes. Second, the perceived importance and principal aims of the National Curriculum for Art and Design Education. Third, the numerous sources of encouragement and support for drawing development. Fourth, the differing perceptions of what constitutes a good and bad drawing. Fifth, issues surrounding an age-related decline in children's drawing activity. Conclusions: The findings are related to theories of drawing education, and implications for children's drawings and drawing pedagogy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article summarizes children's drawings that achieve the status of work of art. Drawing one which is dragon parade, functions as a language by describing the annual Chinatown dragon parade, an important event in the artist's life. Another drawing on rain forest is the key to stimulating the flow of words, spoken and written. When children draw they engage their thoughts and feelings and project psychological situations that adult caregivers can learn to read and respond to.

In this article the author focuses on drawing-related interaction among 5-6-year-old children in two Year One classes in Norwegian primary schools as they engage in teacher-initiated learning activities involving drawing. Inspired in particular by Gunther Kress' semiotic perspective on drawing, the author presents four interaction categories to explore social aspects of young children's engagement in the process of forming visual-graphic signs that convey meaning. The author proposes that while the children's interaction can add support to the drawing process, it may also produce some risk for the children's confidence as drawers. It is the role of the practitioner to manage and facilitate interaction so that support is maximised and risk minimised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined developmental changes in children's ability to understand the emotions expressed in other children's drawings. Eighty participants, at each of four age groups - three, four, five and six years - were, presented with a series of child drawings, each expressing a different emotion (happiness, sadness, anger or fear). All drawings had been previously rated by adult judges on an emotion-intensity scale as being good exemplars of the emotions examined. Next, participants were shown pictures of child artists each expressing one of the designated emotions on her/his face and were instructed to identify the artist who created each drawing. The results showed that: (i) by age three, children demonstrated an understanding of the emotions expressed in drawings; (ii) happiness, sadness and fear were the emotions most easily recognized by participants. Overall, these results provide support for the assertion that the ability to understand the emotional meaning of drawings is present from the preschool years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores and examines a case study based at Ivy Bank Business and Enterprise College, The Imperial War Museum North, and Liverpool John Moores University. This collaboration took place from November 2004 until February 2005 culminating in an exhibition of children's artwork as part of the ‘Moving Minds’ project at the IWM North. This project was built upon a firm foundation of common goals; an investment in educational and curriculum development; learning through an engagement with contemporary art practice; learning within the context of the museum and a belief that working collaboratively can act as an effective antidote to a perceived orthodoxy in art and design education (Steers 2004). Through practitioner enquiry this paper presents three distinct perspectives. The voice of the trainee teacher, the classroom teacher and the university lecturer demonstrate both elements of commonality and difference within the shared experience of this enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's drawings are researched and theorized for many reasons and through a variety of methods. The results present a variety of ways in which children's drawing is understood. This paper challenges the time-honored order of things in producing knowledge of children's drawing by rejecting the belief that a theory of children's drawing must be extrapolated from a theory of drawings made by children. It argues that conditions apply to thinking about children's drawing as an entity in its own right that cannot be satisfied through explaining or understanding the drawings it produces and that the only satisfactory way to accommodate all the conditions pertinent to knowing children's drawing is to accept that it exists as social practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This drawing study examines the relationship between children's preferences for subject content, their use of formal characteristics, and their gender. Elementary students were read a narrative designed to highlight stereotypical gender interests and attitudes. They were then asked to create a titled illustration based on an episode of the story. Two hundred and fifty drawings were scored with reference to 20 conceptual content domains related to gender-based subject preferences and 22 formal characteristics of art. Findings revealed gendered art preferences influence the formation of gendered styles in children's drawing. Female drawings incorporated more humanistic and social content than male drawings, and feminine content domains employed greater variety of color, harmonious color, organic qualities of shape, and more detailed features. Male drawings communicated aggression and adventure in their content, and masculine content domains employed more expressive and symptomatic lines and fewer colors. Recommendations are made to guard against gender stereotyping in the practice of art education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of reflective (slow-accurate) and impulsive (fast-inaccurate) children on two distinctly different drawing tasks. A total of 56 fifth-grade children were administered the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT) to determine their degree of reflection-impulsivity. Subjects completed an imaginary and a realistic drawing which were evaluated by three judges on creative and formal artistic properties. Analysis of variance indicated significant main effects for both the imaginary and realistic drawing activities. Regression analysis revealed that reflectives performed better than impulsives on the imaginary drawing activity on formal artistic criteria. However, reflection-impulsivity was not significantly related to performance on the realistic drawing activity. This study confirms the earlier research which revealed that reflectives perform better on Certain tasks than impulsives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a literary criticism on Claire Golomb's book "The Child's Creation of a Pictorial World." Such work is found to depict a print-out of the child's limited mental life and its association with psychodynamics theory, which represents the child art as a reflection of the child's feelings. However, it is argued that such orientations served as the domain of art at the core of the enterprise, for it involved cognitive and socioemotional constructions. It is found to provide the least compilation at the abstract level to help the reader generalize, generate predictions, or to build educational programs. Also, working with the step-by-step accomplishments of the child is believed to overlook the means in which the form of the product may vary among the expert users.

The article focuses on the authorship of the book "The Child's Creation of a Pictorial World" by Claire Golomb. Golomb's work is considered of great interest by wide audience as it involves aspects of graphic development through several guises among various populations. Golomb was found to have successfully offered awareness to children's art. It is believed to provide a reader a strong sense for young children's visual enthusiasm, inventiveness, and logic. Its visual dimension is found to enable the reader to appreciate the artwork due to various illustrations offered. Golomb's strategic approach is found to involve various experimental and qualitative methods.

The article focuses on the significance of art to children. The author explains that an art to a child means a way for him to find his own personal form of energy. Moreover, a child's art is a personal communication to himself. In addition, when a child dares to make a picture, he asserts energy and skill to pioneer, through the means of self-belief, the transfer of ideas and facts to a public realm. Meanwhile, she emphasizes that the art experience has the potential of developing a sharpened awareness of the wonder and possibilities of human existence.