A Child's Drawing Expresses Their Psychological Ability and Feelings - Essay Example

Talking does not offer a comprehensive medium of expression. According to Golomb (pp. 42), a child’s hidden feelings can only be expressed by art, specifically drawings. Be it small or a large drawing so much can be said from the piece of art. Other than career and professional drawings, drawings have been used to detect the feeling in most children who undergo psychological problems. In some instances drawings as an art has been used as anger management tool. This is an indication on how important art is in managing of human emotion.

In an argument by Herne, Cox & Watts (pp. 115), a child’s drawings expresses about 75% of their internal feelings both emotional and psychological. In interpreting the drawings psychologists consider color, size, location of characters, characters, page location, font and shading type and the facial expression of child when drawing an image or character. Apart from the expression of feelings, drawings at different ages in children denote their psychological growth. From scribbling to real images and drawings is one notable feature in child development when drawings are concerned.

It is this fact that has enabled me to come up with the theory that “a child’s drawing expresses their psychological ability and feelings”. This paper will focus on how drawings show a child psychological growth and interpretation. This stage is known as fortuitous realism. At this stage a child understands scribbling as the best work of art they can achieve. However, as much as scribbling can be seen as insignificant, the way scribbling is done by a child can tell more about their emotion and psychology.

Some children may scribble dark scribbles while at times scribble gentler and light scribbles. According to the American Counseling Association (pp. 34) this may denote anger or frustration and also satisfaction and happiness respectively. The second stage occurs between the ages of 4 – 7. This stage is known as preschematic stage. This stage is categorized into two stages of development. The stages are failed and intellectual realism. In the failed realism a child draws elements that are completely unrelated from the real image of the element.

Intellectual realism is when a child draws an element from their knowledge. For instance, a child may draw a cup since the image is in their brain. The third stage of development is the schematic stage. The stage comes up between the ages of 8 – 9. In this stage a child draws what they see. The element shows the features of the real image. This is aimed at transferring their visual sense to the mental sense then the interpretation follows. It is also noted that this point kids differ from the accuracy of their drawings.

At this point is where the visual and interpretation abilities of children are noted. Different children have different visual and interpretation prowess. This indicates that the psychology of children differs depending on their mental abilities. The three stages show that drawings effectively indicate the psychological growth and strength of children.