Psychologists and educators tend to judge child art by adult   standards of "realism" or "naturalism." By comparison with the work of   accomplished adult artists, children's drawings seem defective, exhibiting the   child's so-called "primitive" conceptions of the world. In her landmark study,   illustrated with more than 200 examples in color and black and white, Claire   Golomb leaves that perspective far behind. She explores child art as an   expression of visual thinkingthe symbol-making function of the mind which   produces images rather than wordsand discovers that child art displays an   orderly progression in the development of representational concepts. Children   show a competent, sophisticated understanding, heretofore unsuspected, of the   nature of representation and its problems.  Working within this developmental framework, Golomb addresses fundamental   aspects of child art that have been neglected in previous studies: the   differentiation of shape in animate and inanimate figures, the creation of   pictorial space, the use of color, the role of affect and expression, and the   emergence of compositional skills. We also witness the path taken by gifted   children, the drawings of retarded and emotionally disturbed children, and the   impact of cultural variables on the child's representation. The intrinsic   predictability of child art development leads to a valuable reassessment of   educational strategies and of clinical interpretations of children's drawings.

The Child's Creation of a Pictorial World PDF

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