The diploma thesis contains a theoretical and an empirical part. In the theoretical part I researched the development of children's artistic and emotional expression. In case of artistic expression, I focused on the child's drawing and the development of artistic expression in the pre-school period. In preschool, we often observe and explore children's drawing, and we can relatively quickly realise how important a role it plays in a child's expression of emotions and thoughts. Drawing can help us to understand both the child's potential distress and his or her needs, experiences and wishes. As part of my thesis, I have been looking at the emotional expression, where I focused on the definition of emotions and the domains of emotion, as well as their development in pre-school period. It is important for the children to be able to express and identify their emotions, as only then they can manage them. I have also touched on the areas that are important in the pre-school period like art class, which contain a perceptible emotional aspect. Others are storytelling and music and their affective aspects in child's life. The musical experiences of children encourage exploration of their ideas, increase the child's expression of emotions and increase awareness and observation of the emotions of other people's feelings. Storytelling in the pre-school period is strongly linked to picture books, which, in both the narrative of the story as well as through illustrations, can influence children's emotions and their expression.
In the empirical part of my thesis, I conducted research to find out whether or how stimulating emotions influences children's choice of colours in artistic expression. To this end I carried out three separate activities related to narration, illustration and listening to music. Twelve children took part in the study. Each child expressed himself six times: based on two artworks, two stories and two pieces of music. In all cases, one piece of art had a positive and the other one a negative connotation. The author of both artworks is Henri Matisse, the author of the sad story is Ida Mlakar (Kako sta Bibi in Gusti preganjala žalost, 2021), the author of the happy story is Uli Geissler and Gunther Jakobs (Laughter Is The Best Medicine, 2009), while the author of the sad music is Beethoven (Moonlight Sonata) and the author of the happy music piece is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (A Little Night Music). The two artworks differed in the posture of the body and the facial expression of the subject in the picture. The two stories differed in the content, one was sad and the other happy, meanwhile the illustrations in both stories were in vivid colours. The music that the children listened to and created to differed in the tempo and calmness. They had a choice of vibrant or calm colours for artistic creation. By analysing the drawings, I found out how the artworks, the stories and the music influenced the choice of colours in artistic expression. I also looked at how the illustrations influenced the content of the children's artistic expression
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