CHILDREN SHOULD DRAW

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6733, 9 October 1928, Page 11

CHILDREN SHOULD DRAW

Don’t laugh if your child of four or live years of age shows you a drawing which ho solemnly assures, you represents a cow'. However strange an object it may appear to you, there is both a meaning and a significance in what he has done, Writes T. E. Ablctt, founder and , art director, Eoyal Drawing Society. in an exchange. ■ ■

It nicans that in a world which may have grown stale and unroihantic to you as an adult, the child’has discovered a wonder. So much has the novelty or size or wonder of the object im-‘. pressed the child that,ho must express its shape in the only manner possible to him—that of drawing. And this urge to draw must bo encouraged to develop in a natural, unspoiled way if the greatest benefit is to ■ be reaped therefrom... »

By. drawing the shapes of the objects which come under his over-widen-ing ken the child is really asserting his primitive instinct of self-preserva-tion—which is essential to. life.' He is striving to familiarise himself with the bewildering variety of beings and things which to us are commonplace, but which to him arc fairly sharply divisible into good and bad, safe and dangerous. •

With the passing of every month be. gains fresh knowledge of the world, and in expressing himself in the only language known to him—that of drawing—he fixes that knowledge, makes it permanent and, unforgettable. The prehistoric gentleman, felt thatthe only way he could do justice to the immense size and of the mammoth was by drawing it, and when the modern. child sets his pencil to paper he is moved by a precisely similar urge. The child is a born -investigator. He sees something, and as it were fixes what he sees in drawing, thus storing his experience for future use. In this manner, he is being helped to understand natures wonderful structures, and incidentally is acquiring the most useful power of building up sound knowledge of the world around him. True, not every child, can become really expert, but still, drawing is a language, - a means of conveying and recording thought, and just as children—with rare exceptions— are born with the power of speech, so also are they showed with the capability of expressing their thoughts in drawing. Every child can draw, and almost every child wants to,

You may think 1 have neglected beauty in this article, but the value of drawing to a child in developing its sense of the beauty of people and things round it and of colour is already widely recognised and stressed. , -