“Let the teaching style
grow from the nature of authentic drawing which means that
it will be spontaneous, improvisational, deeply involving
minute by minute. It will mean picking up clues when they
appear on the paper or in conversation, knowing when to
insert oneself into the pre-and-post-drawing conversation
and when to step aside. You can’t plan for these moments:
you have to develop the art of intuitive response.”
As a teacher in the public schools and
instructor in art education at the University of British
Columbia I have been studying children’s drawings all my
adult life. I am always astonished by what I find. Some
drawings can even be considered works of art when they
have a significant content and achieve a perfectly integrated
formal structure. (See my study of three drawings by six-year-olds
in Draw Me A Story, 1998). Others are simply everyday statements
about growing up. Even these, while lacking the perfection
of art, have a raw aesthetic energy.
Whether defined as art, not-quite-art
or non-art, extensive analysis has taught me one thing:
children use drawing as a language medium. As any language must do, drawings record emotions
and feelings, articulate thoughts and perceptions; embody
a reaching out to relate to the world; speak of a conscious
or unconscious need to communicate. I would summarize in
this way: a few drawings achieve the status of ‘work of
art’; most radiate a degree of ‘aesthetic energy’; all
are language artifacts.
In the mid-eighties I became increasingly
aware of the ‘whole language’ approach to teaching. Primary
teachers have always made word/drawing connections but
suddenly academics were telling us that drawing contributes
significantly to literacy. In some classrooms it became
an integral part of most language arts lessons. It didn’t
last long. Political pressure from ‘back to basics’ activists
forced this enlightened policy underground and a strategy
for improving literacy was diminished, if not temporarily
lost.
Perhaps the pendulum is beginning to shift
again as we realize that drawing is a language in its own
right and words and drawings together are a third possibility
at the core of the child’s hidden language resource. Words
and drawings, an intricately entwined ‘double helix.’ The
drawing part of a manifesto for a new language arts education
might be something along these lines:
• children
use drawing as a language medium to articulate, express
and communicate perceptions, thoughts, and feelings.
• drawing
has the potential to help children achieve literacy in
its several forms: oral expression, written expression
and reading.
• reformed
language education would embrace words alone (speech, writing
and reading); drawing alone (graphic presentations without
printed text) and words and drawings together in mutual
support. The instruments for this reform would be 1) a
daily drawing regimen at home and school from age two and
2) drawing-as-language employed in every school subject
when it contributes to learning and literacy.
Barnette Newman, the American abstract
expressionist said (and I paraphrase): “Art criticism is
to painting as ornithology is to the birds.” Applying this
epigram to the theory of drawing-as-language presented
above, I will now consider three drawings:
Drawing One: Dragon Parade
|
Dragon
Parade Jon (age 4) |
This drawing from memory by a preschooler
illustrates the two poles of our thesis:
Drawing functions as a language by describing
the annual Chinatown dragon parade, an important event
in the artist’s life. Line drawing is used more eloquently
for this purpose than would be possible with words. If
asked to comment on a dragon parade [by an inquiring adult],
children of this age would likely be reduced to mute embarrassment.
There is no printed text but the drawing
at its inception has potential for stimulating word use.
Discussing possible themes, and later finished works, builds
a foundation for spoken and written literacy. Vocabulary
and syntax are stimulated by references to subject matter,
content and form. Moreover, drawing has the power to lead
conversation into deeper areas of thought and feeling,
themes that might otherwise be denied language articulation.
‘Serious’ conversations about drawings have the additional
value of strengthening the bond between child and adult.
Is Jon’s drawing a work of art? Before
exploring this possibility it should be made clear that
the answer has nothing to do with marks or report cards
or standards. Evaluation is appropriate but only as anecdotal
comments on general progress. Why then pursue the question?
To increase our appreciation of how drawing contributes
to mental development and literacy. Two terms are useful:
1) “aesthetic
energy” which springs from how forms relate to each other
and to content and subject matter.
2) “works of
art,” a term that signals a near-perfect realization of
aesthetic energy and fusion of form and content. Aesthetic
energy is the product of intellectual development, internalized
learning and mental health. These are generalized assumptions,
guides to understanding the dynamics of art and its production,
not test items for standardized achievement.
Works of art are a fusion of of form and
content. In terms of content, there must be an authentic
theme, one based on a meaningful life experience. Jon had
witnessed the annual Chinatown dragon parade. Any child
would be impressed by the visual and aural experience,
the vivid colours, the wild dancing beneath the dragon
skin, the ferocious masks. For Jon it was also participation
in an event of ethic cultural significance.
In analyzing form we look for relationships,
how forms are organized to create meaning, how they articulate
feelings and emotions, tell stories, create unified structures.
There are two ways to achieve good form, good design, and
good composition:
•
principles are consciously applied—repetition, diminution,
rhythm, and so on;
•
through empathic involvement with subject matter, content,
and performance.
Post-naïve artists employ both; children,
too young to apply principles, are able to experience a
deep empathic identification with subject matter and performance.
Jon’s drawing is evidence that the human mind, uninhibited
by self-consciousness, performs miracles of formal integration.
This, I believe, is at least a partial explanation. In
Jon’s drawing we see a good form in the integration of
a multitude of structural elements and we see it in the
consistent use of an inverted pyramid. Many “great works
of art” are based on triangulation: Jon intuitively turned
the triangle upside down.
Another part of the explanation is drawing’s
inherent structural advantage. Created under the scanning
mechanism of an information loop, individual marks—400
by rough count—are placed precisely where they will do
the most good, each relative to the ones already in place.
The eye scans, the brain/mind processes (largely in the
preconscious), the hand/tool stylus records on paper.
To appreciate drawing’s unique advantage
think of the disadvantage of oral expression where words
disappear rapidly over a memory horizon, or of writing
where structures must be built from units of an abstract
code. Those are not easy tasks for this age group or any
other, and the benefits of aesthetic energy must come mainly
from drawing if they are to come at all.
Success depends on the drawer being on
‘automatic pilot,’ achieving a suspension of disbelief,
having easy access to the preconscious, being able to identify
with subject matter empathically. These are the very conditions
that are beneficial to mental development, learning, and
mental health. They are also natural and spontaneous for
most children.
Drawing Two: Dragon Parade
|
Dragon
Parade Hogan (Age 7) |
Parents and teachers may wish to organize
daily drawing around various sources of imagery. If a story
is read, children should be encouraged to visualize it
from several points of view before drawing. If a model
is posed it will be helpful to discuss the visible forms
first. Hogan’s is a memory drawing but we should recognize
that while memory plays a role, the drawing is really an
invention of the imagination. As in Jon’s drawing on the
same subject, Hogan, with unbelievable sureness of touch,
adds lines to a gradually expanding structure: not a line
scribbled out, not an approximation anywhere, no evidence
of trial and error. The ‘hidden order of art’ operates
here too (although I’m sure making a good composition was
not on his mind).
At the micro level I am hypnotized by
detail and zoom in on the two dragon heads where forms
are spectacularly complex. At the macro level I follow
the river-form of the two undulating dragons. If you wish
to take the time, there are a thousand drawings in one
to enjoy here. Or scan the whole and feel the rhythm of
the repeated forms just as you might respond to the drum
if you were actually at the parade.
Drawing Three: Rain Forest
|
Rain
Forest: Conor (primary-age) |
From the point of view of language, this
too is a remarkable drawing. When I was a child our teacher,
supported by the prevailing pedagogy, held us to reading
simplistic sentences about Dick and Jane and in writing,
to practicing letter forms and words endlessly. In art
we coloured-in hectographed images from a publisher’s catalogue.
Is this what ‘back to basics’ people want to return to?
In contrast to my intellectually barren
school days, Conor was thrown into an exciting language
adventure. Let’s see what we can make of his work:
This is language in the service of science
education and three symbol systems were engaged:
1) A
lively oral exchange between teacher and pupils on the
topic of insects and the rain forest. Concepts, vocabulary,
and syntax were modeled by the teacher and practiced by
a class of eager children.
2) A worksheet
provide space for a drawing and a printed text. Conor had
an opportunity to compose a scholarly text. While words
are misspelled we should keep in mind that he heard them
in his mind, knew what they meant as he printed them. The
transfer from oral language to writing was underway. In
my day, writing was restricted to words that could be correctly
spelled.
Conor’s teacher evidently believed that spelling would
eventually catch up and undoubtedly took immediate remedial
steps to begin that process. (It is simply misguided dogma
to think that holistic teaching has no use for spelling,
syntax, grammar, and phonics.) In the meantime, a complex
paragraph was composed.
3) The teacher
provided a printed translation, a model of correctness,
and an opportunity for Conor to practice reading. Having
written the text, is there any doubt that the boy would
read and perhaps reread his own writing in the teacher’s
corrected form? Are we not impressed then with his reading
level? If activities like this are part of a daily, even
hourly routine, can we doubt that Conor would eventually
achieve full literacy? And as for spelling, can we not
then have faith in its gradual improvement?
I am increasingly convinced that drawing
is the key to stimulating the flow of words, spoken and
written. It begins as a private language, a mediation on
personal experience and this is the source of its power
to nurture mental development. (For this reason there should
be frequent free drawing periods.) But there are bound
to be ambiguities in personal drawing. When he made his
ant drawing Conor knew the answers, but his audience might
ask, “…just what is this dark shape over here?” or “what
is happening with the ant who seems to be carrying something?”
Ambiguities lead to questions and questions to answers:
the drawing becomes the focus of a lively discussion, one
that would otherwise not have taken place.
Would it not be a good idea to formalize
a discussion segment, an opportunity to “explain your drawing
to a friends”? Oral or written responses would be equally
productive. A printed passage like Conor’s might lead to
an unbounded discussion or an improved or expanded text.
Would literacy benefit? Would learning become internalized
and memorable? It seems most probable.
When children draw they engage their deepest
thoughts and feelings and project psychological situations
that adult caregivers can learn to “read” and respond to.
Drawings, and the words they stimulate, will reveal current
problems, preoccupations, worrie, fears, enthusiasms, epiphanies
and so on. The goal is to engage the child’s perceptions,
thoughts, feelings, memory and imagination.
Editors’ Note: A version of this article
was originally published by the Drawing Network, October
2, 2002. It is republished as a reminder that inquiry
and expression through the arts inhabits children’s art
and play, and that as researchers and enquirers, we might
recall the value of listening to the work of children
as they explore, interpret, and share their understanding
of their individual worlds with us.
About the Author
Bob Steele is
a former Associate Professor at the University of British
Columbia, in Vancouver, B.C. began the Drawing Network
in 1988 as a grass roots organization to proselytize
that children use drawing as a language medium and an
aid to literacy. Draw Me a Story by Bob
Steele is published by Portage and Main Press. Toll free
number 1-800-667-9673. Pamphlets on various aspects of
drawing are available without charge. A donation to cover
costs of printing and mailing is appreciated. Cheques
made to University of B.C. Bob’s mailing address is 3853
West 15th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. V6R 3A1. Telephone:
604-224-1004. Fax: 604-822-4714.
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