Water-color paintings from nature, showing spontaneous expression resulting from work in natural science.
The study of natural science proved to be a great help in drawing. Once I tried to show some children how a flower should be dissected, and for this purpose I provided all the necessary instruments: the botanist's needle, pincers, thin glass plates, etc., just as is done at the university for the experiments in natural science. My only aim was to see whether the preparations which university students make for botanical anatomy were in any way adaptable to the needs of little children. Even at the time when I studied in the botanical laboratory at the university I felt that these exercises in the preparation of material might be put to such use. Students know how difficult it is to prepare a stem, a stamen, an epithelium, for dissection, and how only with difficulty the hand, accustomed for years exclusively to writing, adapts itself to this delicate work. Seeing how skilful our children were with their little hands I decided to give them a complete scientific outfit and to test by experiment whether the child mind and the characteristic manual dexterity shown by children were not more adapted to such labors than the mind and hand of a nineteen-year-old student.
My suspicion proved correct. The children with the keenest interest dissected a section of the violet with remarkable accuracy, and they quickly learned to use all the instruments. But my greatest surprise was to find that they did not despise or throw away the dissected parts, as we older students used to do. With great care they placed them all in attractive order on a piece of white paper, as if they had in mind some secret purpose. Then with great joy they began to draw them; and they were accurate, skilled, tireless, and patient, as they are in everything else. They began to mix and dilute their colors to obtain the correct shades. They worked up to the last minute of the school session, finishing off their designs in watercolor: the stem and leaves green, the individual petals violet, the stamens—all in a row—yellow, and the dissected pistil light green. The following day a little girl brought me a charmingly vivacious written composition, in which she told of her enthusiasm over the new work, describing even the less noticeable details of the little violet.
These two expressions—drawing and composition—were the spontaneous manifestations of their happy entrance into the realms of science.
Encouraged by this great success, I took some simple microscopes to school. The children began to observe the pollen and even some of the membrane coverings of the flower. By themselves they made some splendid cross-sections of the stems, which they studied most attentively.
They "drew everything they saw." Drawing seemed to be the natural complement of their observation work.
In this way the children learned to draw and paint without a drawing teacher. They produced works which, in geometric designs as well as in studies from life, were considered far above the average drawings of children.