The bachelor’s thesis entitled Impact of Illustrations on Artistic and Linguistic Expression of Preschool Children contains a theoretical and empirical part. In the theoretical part, I researched the development of children's artistic and linguistic expression. They develop in parallel and intertwine with each other. In artistic expression, I focused on the child’s drawing and its development in the preschool period. By observing and researching a child’s drawing, we can see how important it is for his expression of thoughts and emotions. At the same time, the child's drawing allows us to understand his experiences, distresses, needs, and much more. In the linguistic expression, I focused on the development of speech that takes place in the pre-linguistic and linguistic period. I focused on the development of children's storytelling for which they need appropriate encouragement which can be found in many quality picture books. Picture books contain an unlimited source for observation and storytelling because they combine both literature and art. I also presented wordless picture books where illustrations, pictures, and images speak instead of words. The illustrations in the picture books must be of good quality, which can be assessed with the help of the criteria for quality illustration which I presented at the end of the theoretical work.
In the empirical part, I tried to find out how illustrations affect a child's artistic and linguistic expression. I invited 14 children to participate in my research of which 7 girls and 7 boys aged 5. Each child based the story on two illustrations from wordless picture books. The first was an illustration by Maja Kastelic (Boy and House), and the second was an illustration by Andreja Gregorič (Gift). The illustrations differed in the color scales used by the illustrators to create a specific atmosphere compatible with the content story. After the storytelling, the children also made a drawing by themselves. They were able to choose between vibrant or soothing colors. Based on their drawing, the children also created their own stories. The analysis of the drawings was intended to determine how often children use vibrant or soothing colors to create their illustrations. It was also intended to determine which attributes from the primary illustrations are transferred to the child's art presentation.
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