Developmental Phases in Art
Adapted from an article in “Explorations with Young Children”
by Leah Levinger and Ann-Marie Mott

As children grow and develop, their artwork changes, too. One of the most dramatic and important milestones in cognitive development is the ability to use symbols, to make one thing stand for another. This symbolic capacity, beginning around one year, becomes refined through ages 3 and 4 and is reflected in the child’s use of language and symbolic play. The clothespin becomes an airplane, the doll becomes a baby. The young child also becomes a maker of artistic symbols, realizing that a few lines or circles on a piece of paper can represent something. Now the world of artistic creation has opened up.

Throughout early childhood, new skills and understandings of visual symbols emerge. The skills and understandings, in turn, stimulate further growth and interest. The younger child uses broad, generalized images that become increasingly differentiated and complex, reflecting ever more advanced knowledge and view of the world. Alongside these developments, the child’s ability to plan and think ahead matures.

Advances in physical growth and knowledge of what their bodies can do also affect children’s artistic expressions. The large muscular, random movements of the toddler become increasingly refined. The whole-fist grip gives way to a dexterous small-motor manipulation.

While change is not neatly predictable, general patterns in children’s artistic development do occur, although the timetable varies for different children. A child may simultaneously be doing “less mature” scribbles and beginning representations of people. The age ranges for the different phases of art development should be used a general guides for children who are having consistent, open-ended experiences with the materials of art. Growth is uneven and even as a new phase emerges, an earlier phase never entirely vanishes.

These stages typify children’s development as artists:

• Exploration of art materials ( ages 1_ to 3) Typically, toddlers delight as much in the movement of their arms, the feel of brush or crayon in their hands, even the smell of paint or clay, as in what they are producing. Children may even look away from the paper while drawing and not bother to glance at the finished product. They may mix all the colors together or randomly distribute marks on different areas of the paper.
  
  
• Control of the material (ages 3 to 4) Older children are able to decide — and control — which lines should be long or short, wavy or straight, thick or thin, what color and where on the paper. They discover that they can make patches of different colors, mixed and unmixed. Their simple, random, and amorphous lines, shapes, and forms become more differentiated and controlled, reflecting their growing awareness of the nature of the material and their own activity.
  
  
• Creation of designs (ages 3 to 5) At this stage, children who have had many experiences with exploration and control combine and arrange shapes, lines, and colors into aesthetically pleasing designs. They have an intuitive and spontaneous sense of composition and of how their newly acquired knowledge about the material can be combined and elaborated into stunning, vibrant designs.
  
  
• Early Representation (ages 3 to 5) At around the age of 4 with drawing and towards 5 in paint or clay, another developmental milestone occurs. Children’s visual symbols remind them of something and suddenly the exclaim “Look, it’s me!” or “This is a big bulldozer!” Gradually, children begin to plan ahead. They discover that they can make people, animals, buildings, plants, and vehicles by combining simple shapes, lines, and color from their earlier experiences in art.
  These early representations are not entirely realistic. It is important that an adult either wait for the child to identify the figure or ask whether the child wants to say something about the picture. The question “What is it?” presumes that the child has made a representation, which may or may not be the case.
  
  
• Later representation (ages 5 to 8) Children in this stage plan and organize more complete and detailed representations of their experiences and fantasies. Unlike their earlier representations of one or just few important figures, they now often include many aspects of the environment or event. At first, objects may be scattered on the surface in an interesting design rather than being a repsresentation of the actual space. The colors and sizes of people and things often reflect their importance to the particular child, rather than a realistic rendering.
  
  

There is a transition phase between early and later representational work, usually between 5 and 7 yours. Landscapes may become sterile, rigid, and stereotyped in adult eyes as the child works for precision.

By the time children are 7 and 8, they have a sense of themselves in relation to society. Their themes become richer, more varied, and realistic; friends, people at work and play, and settings appear as integral components of their artwork. However, they are working from their own view of the world, and an adult might perceive their work as a distortion of reality.

If children are given repeated open-ended experiences with art materials and are supported in their efforts to express their ideas and feelings without undue pressure to create “realistic” or “pretty” images, the pattern of artistic growth develops naturally and inevitably over time.