intensity in children’s drawings in terms of mechanical aspects and their interests in creating balanced abstract designs.
A limitation with such studies, according to Cox (2005), is that children’s drawings are interpreted from an adults’ perspective, where the focus is more on what they observed rather than what the child was trying to communicate. Anning and Ring (2004) claim that in such developmental theories, there tends to be more focus on the technical and cognitive aspects of the drawings rather than on the content, explicitly isolating and disregarding children’s emotions and thought processes, their intentions, the contexts they live in and the meanings they create. As claimed by Matthews (1999), children do not begin to represent their perceptions when their drawings are a “correct form of representation” (p. 93) but as from their very first markings, children draw with intention and meaning. What is of more concern in such models is that they portray drawing in a deficit way that is geared at creating accurate representations towards reaching visual realism, which children frequently lack (Anning and Ring, 2004). Contrastingly, what can be termed as immature drawing, or a distortion of what is perceived, can be better defined as exploration or discovery of the process of drawing (Cox, 2005). Having said this, Coates and Coates (2011) claim, that Kellogg (1969) provided valuable insights into young children’s ways of representation that can aid adults in understanding the children’s meaning-making processes attributed to their drawings.
3.3.2 The emerging discourse of contextualised meaning in
drawing
Other scholars moved away from analysing children’s drawings from only a developmental perspective to embrace one of intention and meaning. Dyson’s (1993a) model, which was later developed by Ring (2001), and Anning and Ring
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____________________________________________________________________ 55 (2004), differs from Kellogg’s (1969) even if one can draw some parallelisms. While Kellogg focused mainly on children’s cognitive development in drawing, Dyson (1993a) concentrated more on drawing as a vehicle for meaning-making. The fourth and fifth columns in Table 3.1 illustrate a summary with examples from Dyson’s model. She first perceives drawing as an exploratory behaviour and later on as a tool for representing objects and actions. Subsequently, children begin to use drawing as an additional prop in play to ultimately utilise it as a mode of meaning-making. According to Dyson (1993a), initially children do not make distinctions between drawing and writing and use these two modes intermittently, to weave their own stories in support of their drawings. Maybe, the evolvement of the role of drawing and its relationship to talk and writing for children’s meaning-making is the most significant observation in Dyson’s model, a notion which Matthews (1999) and Coates and Coates (2011) also refer to.
In his book The Art of Childhood and Adolescence: The Construction of Meaning, (1999) and other publications (2003, 1998, 1997), Matthews moved away from a paradigm of “naïve realism” (Matthews, 1998, p. 90), to create a framework where he combined children’s visual representations to their cognitive and affective aspects. In his theory of the “4 dimensional language of infancy” (Matthews, 1997, p. 285), that recognises the children’s contextual and social environment, Matthews (1999) created a model of “action representation” (p. 21) which he presented through a scheme of three “generation structures” (Matthews, 1999, p.21) (Table 3.1, sixth and seventh columns). In the following discussion, I draw comparisons between Matthews’ (1999) theory and Kellogg’s (1969) perspectives. In his “first generation structure” Matthews, (1999, p. 21) highlights the children’s exploration of pre-verbal gestures, or what he called, “three basic actions” (Matthews, 1999, p. 21) that include the drawing of strokes, spots and marks which serve as a way to signify later representations. Even if this stage strikes significant parallelism with Kellogg’s (1969) notion of basic scribbles, Matthews’ (2003, 1999) concept differs, in that he claims that children’s early marking actions are far different from the scribbling stage as presented in conventional theory. He explains that as from the first representations, children engage in an “investigation of visual and dynamic structure” (p. 49) of movement, shape and emotions. At the same time they discern the
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____________________________________________________________________ 56 representational possibilities of mark-making, where children exhibit semantic and structural characteristics that are full of intention. He argues that as from these early representations, children record an event or object through their own perception and “process of attention” (Matthews, 1999, p.93), where drawing becomes a synchronisation of body movement, dialogue and sound effects that afford them with ways of making sense of the world around them. This view of children’s scribbling as intentional and purposeful, is also supported by Hope (2008) who likewise claims that even from their first mark-makings, children are exploring the effect of their movement and the use of the crayon to create a mark on paper.
In Matthews’ (1999) “second generation structure” (p.25), children create continuous rotations and lines, amongst others. Once again this is comparable to Kellogg’s (1969) notion of emergent diagrams where children use lines, crosses and other shapes to draw. One of the drawing activities which Matthews (1999) focuses on in his “third generation structure” (p.25) is “collinearity” (p.27), that is, the children’s activities of combining two or more actions to draw objects and figures with more detail. This is akin to Kellogg’s (1969) phase of early “pictorialism” (p.114) and the emergence of early images. While Matthews does not directly refer to the children’s use of language (verbal and written) in their drawings as part of his generation structures, yet, like Dyson (1993a), he also deals with the complex interrelationship between the children’s drawings and the purposeful use of verbal utterances and conventional written symbols. According to Matthews (1999), as part of the “third generation structure” (p. 25) children begin to differentiate and intentionally make use of the different semiotic systems such as pictorial images, numbers and letters to create their representations and use talk to describe their drawings. Matthews (2003) claims that drawing extends language which in turn organises drawing. What is intriguing about Matthews’ (2003, 1999) position is that while he acknowledges children’s drawings within a developmental perspective, unlike Kellogg (1969) he does not tie it to a stage-like process but considers it as a “seamless continuum … organised and meaningful right from the start” (Matthews, 2003, p. 59/26).
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____________________________________________________________________ 57 Informed by Kellogg’s (1969) and Matthews’ (1999) patterns in children’s drawings, together with their analysis of up to 800 children’s self-directed drawings, Coates and Coates (2011) came up with a set of broad descriptions of children’s structures in drawing for meaning (Table 3.1, columns eight and nine). Similar to Kellogg’s (1969) notion of “expressive gestures” (p. 14) and Matthews’ (1999) “first generation structure” (p. 21), Coates and Coates (2011) define children’s first means of drawing as composed from lines which they intentionally use to make figures and objects. This is followed by the development of geometric symbols or schemas, a pattern also identified by Kellogg (1969). Subsequently, according to Coates and Coates (2011), children begin to draw what they know while mixing plans and front elevations. Drawing within a baseline and a skyline without overlapping becomes another important characteristic of children’s drawings. Consequently, and similar to Dyson (1993a) and Matthews (2003), Coates and Coates (2011) highlight the
importance of emergent writing as a response and support to children’s drawings.
There is an obvious overlap and links between the six models. While all give importance to children’s first level of elementary drawing behaviour and exploration of basic movements, first actions and patterns, these are perceived differently by the different theorists. Luquet (1997/2001), Lowenfeld and Brittain (1947/1987) as well as Kellogg (1969) analysed children’s drawings largely from a developmental aspect based on visual realism, where they interpreted children’s drawings as observable patterns within structural features, stages and levels. Pariser (1995) strongly criticises such a stance and questions the “unilinear graphic development and the presumed direct relationship between the achievement of ‘realistic’ perspectival rendering and the development of higher cognitive skills” (p. 94). He also claims that a stage theory perspective is narrow as it ignores the children’s social, historical and cultural contexts. It also assumes that there is no relationship between drawing, thinking and other modes of communication. This argument is supported by Atkinson (2009) who claims that children’s drawing should not be assessed by using particular models of development, as these tend to ignore the functioning significance and personal meaning the drawing has for the child.
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____________________________________________________________________ 58 Contrastingly, in their analysis of children’s drawings, Dyson (1993a), Matthews (1997) and Coates and Coates’ (2011), claim that as children draw from memory to include their perceptions and interpretations of an object, they create endless possibilities for meaning-making. Such flexibility where a circle can represent a car (Kress, 1997), a dot can represent a duck (Cox, 2005), while a combination of lines, arcs and dots can create a thunderstorm (Mavers, 2011), offers great opportunities for the intensification of sense-making. A noticeable commonality lies between Dyson’s (1993a) and Matthews’ (1999) models, who both highlight the children’s phase of combining action with drawing, where children use marks, gestures, movements and words as a social activity to symbolise and represent objects and actions. Another similarity lies between Coates and Coates’ (2011) reference to intellectual realism in children’s drawings, Matthews’ (1999) “third generation structure” (p. 25) where he gives importance to the children’s organisation and transformation in mark-making and Dyson’s (1993a) observation of the children’s links of drawings to real objects. They all describe the beginning of young children’s drawing practices constructed through a sign system as a means to create meaning. This relationship is then highlighted in the importance of the intimate liaison that exists between role-play and drawing. Dyson’s (1993a) and Coates and Coates’ (2011) models also bring out the importance of cultural and individual differences that exist in children’s drawings. Likewise, their stronger reflection and identification of the relationship between talk, writing and drawing, brings out the importance of narration for the emergence of meaning in drawing, an aspect which I will pursue later on in this chapter. Although Luquet, (1927/2001), Lowenfeld and Brittain, (1947/1987), and Kellogg (1969) have contributed to the understanding of children’s drawings better, the theoretical stance adopted by these scholars, conflicts with my position as an interpretivist and constructionist researcher, where I tend to favour more Dyson’s (1993a), Matthews’ (1999) and Coates and Coates’ (2011) views, who regard children’s drawings as intentional modes for meaning-making.
Other recognised influential scholars who valued children’s drawing as a multimodal process of meaning-making, include Kress (1997), Mavers (2011), Pahl (2002, 1999b), and Wright, (2010b, 2010a, 2007b, 2006), amongst others. I have already mentioned these studies above; however, at this stage, I find it opportune to make
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____________________________________________________________________ 59 cross-references to children’s representational drawings and narratives while narrowing down my argument on the relationship of meaning-making. In his significant study, Kress (1997), documented that the children’s use of multiple of modes in drawing, complements and abets their ways of creating meaning. Subsequently, he claims, that children use their drawings as props in their play and accompanying narratives; an aspect also observed by Dyson (1993a), Pahl (2002, 1999b) and Wohlwend (2008). Another factor highlighted by both Kress (1997) and Pahl (2002, 1999b) is the children’s flexible movement between modes in drawing, which frequently creates multiple transformations, interpretations and a shift in interests. Dyson (1993a), Kress (1997), and Coates and Coates (2011), highlight the importance of words as a mode with different affordances that complements drawings to fully illustrate action and narrative sequence that help convey meaning. In support of this, Anning and Ring (2004) claim that drawing should be perceived as an instrument for young children to represent their personal narratives and understandings and to subsequently communicate their significance to others.