The content and meaning in young children’s drawings

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore children’s drawings from a “contextual drawing analysis” (Frisch, 2006, p. 76), that is, the children’s ordinary drawings, which they do out of their free will or as encouraged by adults. Children develop such a process through an on-going dialogue with themselves, the image they create, the materials they use and the people who are within close proximity, where they use drawing as a language to symbolise and communicate their world in a meaningful way to others (Cox, 2005; Wright, 2011). I therefore hold children’s drawings as “graphic representations” (Machón, 2013, p.77), as, “the depiction of an object, situation or event which may or may not be preset”. I also consider drawings as a means of knowing and understanding, of thinking and feeling, and a form of social and interactive communication, where children engage in “a constructive process of thinking in action, rather than a developing ability to make visual reference to objects in the world” (Cox, 2005, p. 123). [excerpt]