A child's development is based on the teaching and learning process that allows him to develop in the fields of perception, cognition, understanding, thinking, feeling and behavior. The important role for this development belongs to the artistic expression. We are familiar with different typical levels of artistic expression, which are parallel to the child's mental and physical development. These levels do not always appear at the same age, because some children develop faster than others, but they always appear in the same sequence, from the simplest form to the more complex ways of expression. The development of the children's drawing can therefore be studied in its relationship to the art theory and visual perception. Through the children's growth more and more relations between visual art elements can be observed in their drawing, as well as increased articulated composition and visual space. An important role in the articulation of the artistic relations in the composition and in the artistic space belongs to the art variables. These are often "invisible" in the artwork, but have a big influence on a viewer mostly by their mutual interactions. In my master's degree I studied and observed the role of the art variables in the development of the children's drawing and I observed how exactly the role of these different variables is changing based on the level of the artistic development. The survey was conducted theoretically and empirically. In the theoretical part I first examined and described each phase of the children's drawing development based on findings and theories of different authors. Then I described all the art variables (size, position, direction, texture, density, weight and number) and I theoretically analyzed their roles in terms of human perception of the artistic compositions and space. In the empirical part I conducted a qualitative study, based on an analysis of the children's drawing. The drawings were collected in my hometown primary school, where I was teaching three different classes of different age group. The first lesson was conducted in the first grade, the second in the fifth grade and the last in the ninth grade. This is how I got an overview of the children's drawings from different stages of artistic development, which I then analyzed in relation to the art variables (how the role of the variables is changing through different ages and stages of development of drawing, what their effects are in the children's artistic composition and space). I also observed and analyzed the similarities and differences between the children that belong to the same age group.
|