Children's Ways Part 13

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).

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).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 7 (_a_).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 7 (_b_).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 8.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9 (_a_).[13]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9 (_b_).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9 (_c_).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9 (_d_).]

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

The drawing of the trunk may commence in different ways. Sometimes a lame attempt is made to indicate it by leaving s.p.a.ce between the head and the legs, that is, by not attaching the legs to the head. Another contrivance is where the s.p.a.ce between the legs is shown to be the trunk by shading or by drawing a vertical row of b.u.t.tons. 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_)).

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 a.s.sumes a variety of shapes, triangular, rectangular, and circular or ovoid, this last being, however, the most common.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9 (_e_).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 11.]

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.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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).

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15.]

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 ill.u.s.trates 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).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 16.--Humpty Dumpty on the wall.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 17.]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

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 ill.u.s.trated, 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_)).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 19.--A miner.]