Margaret McMillan

“ If the teacher, or friend, however, can himself draw an animal, or still better, a man, their delight and admiration know no bounds. Unhappily, even the best teachers, with very few exceptions (but these exceptions include Leonardo da Vinci) usually ignore this impulse, and offer few suggestions and little help to the mannikin-drawing children. The reason is not far to seek. Even very learned people are usually aware that they cannot draw a man very well, and they do not want to be asked to try. ”

“ And on many grounds the impulsion may be justified which makes a child pass by his own form, and also the form of hobbledehoys, to draw the adult face and figure. Endless faces does every child scribble on his slate, without knowing anything about the law of beauty and fitness. ”

“ It is noticeable, however, that in the case of most children, those embryo-like drawings, with their saw-teeth, rake fingers, and claw-like hands, do not give place to others of better proportions. They do not go on (though it is only a step) from the straight arm to the tapered one, or from the clawed hand to the human hand. On the contrary, they stop drawing quite suddenly, and nothing remains of the early and healthy impulse but a life-long conviction on the part of the little artist that he cannot draw. ”

“ Strange to say, this adult form is not at all like his own.
His own body does not illustrate the law of fitness and beauty, though during the whole growing period it is striving to fulfil it. Below is a drawing from Zeizing of the newly-born child. The head is enormous, the upper part of the body long in proportion to the lower. Every part seems to feel the force of gravity. To be sure the years that follow bring a great change in the proportions of the figure, so that at seven a child is as little like an infant of a week old as he is like a man of thirty years. ”

“ And yet, though the normal child's selection of a model is certainly very bold, it is strangely wise. For, when we begin to consider the human form we find that it is not only the measure of all things, but also that it is, as we said, a kind of store-house of originals. ”

“ The young child cannot project his hand, but he uses it, and invents, or discovers rather, a hundred ways of using it, so that some teachers, as we have seen, have set themselves to copy them. He does not project his sense organs in instruments, but he loves, not only music, but noise, experiments even in painful ways (as when he draws a screeching pencil down his slate) . He cannot project his muscles in fine mechanisms, but everyone knows how he experiments with muscles and even with joints. ”

“ It is beginning to dawn on many that perhaps we have not seen, and do not yet see, the full meaning of this impulse to draw the human form.
↑ It is through man, too, that they approach the study, not only of art, but of the natural sciences and of Geography. "Children," as Kropotkin says, "care little for Nature if it has nothing to do with man." ↑ The school doctor looks at a child's drawings, as he looks at a child's face or hand—that is, mainly to learn what he can about him. His interest in the drawing itself is a secondary thing. ”

“ But the drawing reveals something about the artist—his touch, sight, memories, attentive power, etc.—so it is like the tool, a kind of book for him to read. As early art is very naïve, it is easier to read the meaning of child drawings, modellings, and inscriptions than might be supposed. It is proposed that at the International Exhibition of School Hygiene next year, a place shall be given to drawings, etc., as records, and to certain peculiarities in drawing, writing, and printing as symptoms. ”

“ But every one knows that at a certain age children want to draw, and also that for some years they show a very distinct preference for the living model, and will draw animals and men, even though these are the most difficult subjects of all and are hardly attempted by some grown-up artists, except in the way of caricature. ”

“ Children of all nations and classes—Japanese children of the highest class as well as British children of the poorest class, cover walls, pavements, and books, with drawings of the human form, and also model this figure, too, with any material that comes handy—it may be mud, or it may be snow. ”