Drawing Development

Yesterday, something amazing happened.

Elsie and I were drawing.  She asked for my page, which was covered in a collection of seemingly unrelated doodle nonsense (a snake, a beetle, a pile of apples, a fish).  Next to the pile of apples, Elsie drew a little person.  The person had a round face, two round eyes, a mouth, two ears, a mess of hair... then two looong stick legs... and two feet!

"Daddy."  She declared, victorious.

Unmistakable.  The man is all legs!

Recognizable faces are relatively recent for miss Elsie.  This is the first that I've seen of limbs.  It is both totally expected: of course she had to learn how to draw limbs at some point; and completely surprising: one day she picks up a pen and, without any practice or premeditation, she just does it.

She traded for a purple marker, and started to draw me.  My big, round head almost filled the page.  Eyes.  Ears.  Flat mouth (looks just like me with those thin lips), a little bit of hair, legs... feet... one big monkey arm...

She set her pen down over "my" right ear [bottom of image], paused, picked it up leaving only a tiny dot and repositioned the pen under the ear instead.  She drew the other arm.

"Mommy, it's you."

 So it is!

Then she went wild.  She filled twenty pieces of printer paper with figures, fronts and backs.  I scanned my favorite, scribbling down her explanation before I could forget it.

"This is me. Mama [orange], you're cutting my hair. See the scissors? Don't worry about daddy [lower right corner]. He's just doing something in the basement. Here are Karela and Quinerda [part of the imaginary friend posse, upper right]. They're kissing each other and doing exercises -- like a crab." 

I was curious about the spots on her face, under her mouth and on her forehead.  "Elsie, what are those spots?" 

[In order from top to bottom] "That is soot from the fireplace, pickle, orange, strawberry, and blueberry on my face."  

She gave me an explanation about the pink forehead spots, too, but I didn't understand it, and can't remember the fictitious word she used to describe them.  One thing is clear: they're not strawberries.  A headband, maybe? A comb?

***

Hub and I were such proud and delighted parents that -- I cringe to admit it -- we went online to look up this developmental stage and see if Elsie is some sort of a prodigy.  We are SUCH PARENTS.  

We found that this stage of drawing has a name: The Pre-Schematic or Pre-Symbolic stage of figure-drawing.  (And yes, Elsie is marginally on the young side for demonstrating it as a three-year-old, but we, her parents are severely on the ridiculous side for checking.) 

PRE-SCHEMATIC STAGE The pre-schematic, or pre-symbolic, stage begins around age four; however, it may start earlier or later, depending on the child's cultural and artistic experience. In this stage, the amoeba or tadpole people may have faces, hands, and even toes, but no bodies. These figures face front and often have big smiles. Omission of body details is not a sign that something is developmentally wrong. It just means that other things in the drawing of the person are more important. For example, heads are the first objects drawn and may continue to be bigger than other parts of the body. This is usually done because the child sees the head as being very important. The child eats, speaks, sees, and hears with parts of the head.
Colors are selected on whim and usually have no relationship with what is being drawn. Figures may be scattered all over the page, or the page turned in every direction as the figures fill the paper. Objects and figures may appear to float all over the page because children do not yet know how to express three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface.
The child's self-portrait appears as an amoeba person, but it will usually be the biggest figure, appearing in the center of the page. The child may test different ways to draw a self-portrait before settling on one for a period of time. In this instance, art helps define a child's self image.

Thanks to Health of Children for the info

Hub and I also puffed our chests with pride to hear that it is thought to be a sign of good self-confidence when the child's own image occupies most of the picture, and a bit of a worry if some other figure consistently looms larger than the child.  There Elsie is, large and in charge of every sheet of printer paper.

I love these art milestones because, unlike most child milestones after the age of 15 months, they are so obvious.  It's not like speech, where one day you suspect that your child is speaking in longer paragraphs than last week.  She is, but it's hard to put a finger on when it happened, or what, exactly, is so much more than before.  Here, there's a visual record.  Last month, people were blobs.  Last week, people got round faces with eyes and hats.  Today, they get arms and legs, hands, feet, and ears.  Boom!  Pre-schematic stage!

Babies get firsts all the time.  First night slept.  First tooth cut.  First solids swallowed.  First crawl.  First word.  First walk.  Kids must have firsts all the time, too, but they mostly sneak under the radar.  Not this one.  What a thrill to see the learning and growing drawn out on the page before me.