Children's Ways / Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter

by James Sully

There is a corresponding development of the foot from a bare indication by a line to something like a form in which toes are commonly represented by much the same devices as fingers. In the better drawings, however, one notes signs of a tendency to hide the toes, and to indicate the notch between the heel and the sole of the boot.

Side Views of Things.

So far, I have dealt only with the child's treatment of the front view of the human face and figure. New and highly curious characteristics begin to appear when he attempts to give the profile aspect.

Fig. 19.—A miner.

A child, it must be remembered, prefers the full face arrangement, as he wants to indicate all its important features, especially the two eyes. "If," writes a Kindergarten teacher, "one makes drawings in profile for quite little children, they will not be satisfied unless they see two eyes; and sometimes they turn a picture round to see the other side." This reminds one of a story told, I believe, by Catlin of the Indian chief, who was so angry at a representation of himself in profile that the unfortunate artist went in fear of his life.

At the same time children do not rest content with this front view. After a time they try, without any aid from the teacher, to grope their way to a new mode of representing the face and figure, which, though it would be an error to call it a profile drawing, has some of its characteristics.

The first clear indication of an attempt to give the profile aspect of the face is the introduction of the side view of the nose into the contour. The little observer is soon impressed by the characteristic, well-marked outline of the nose in profile; and the motive to bring this in is strengthened by his inability, already illustrated, to make much of the front view of the organ. The addition is made either by adding a spindle-like projection after completing the circle of the head, as in Figs. 6 and 7 (a), or more adroitly by modifying the circular outline. The other features, the eyes and the mouth, are given in full view as before.

It may well seem a puzzle to us how a normal child of five or six can complacently set down this self-contradictory scheme of a human head. How little any idea of consistency troubles the young draughtsman is seen in the fact that he will, not infrequently, reach the absurdity of doubling the nose, retaining the vertical line which did duty in the first front view along with the added nasal projection (see Fig. 19).

This appearance of the nose as a lateral projection is apt to be followed by a similar side view of the ear (as seen in Fig. 19), of the beard and other adjuncts which the little artist wants to display in the most advantageous way.