Phase/Stages of Aesthetic Development:
The Early Childhood through Early Adolescents
Zi (Zoe) Ye
Scribbling, The First State of Self-Expression (2 to 4 years):
The first stages of mark making have nothing to do with visual representation but entirely with (1) discovering one’s ability to translate motion or kinesthetic activity onto a surface, (2) eventually recognizing one’s ability to repeat marks, and (3) gradually gaining some control over the materials and one’s body.
Mark making is a language like others - oral communication, literacy, motor skills, math, science, …. Children’s early mark making, scribbling, are valuable and critical experiences to developing the motor skills associated with organizing more complex thoughts.
Young children, toddlers, are kinesthetic and sensory learners and their initial mark making is the first stage of their building/establishing motor control that will later manifest itself in eating with utensils, pulling up a zipper, filling a sand bucket and eventually writing, reading and pattern recognition.
Mark making and scribbling evolves over time. The first stage is disorderly and a truly kinesthetic experience where the child is learning about the tool - the black crayon, establishing some eye hand coordination, and seeing something where nothing was before. As the child grows in their ability to direct their hand movements, organize their actions, and discover the qualities of their marks, their marks begin to have directionality, density, speed and more control. You may notice longitudinal marks. Next comes circular scribbling where there is a definition of inside and outside, containment, and connecting a line to itself.
Group8_Painting_Azalea_girl_1yr
Our first picture (#1), shows a child using her brush to make marks of different thicknesses and density of color. There are lines, dots, and the start of circular motion. The vibrancy of the markings represent the enthusiasm of experimentation with the brush, its movement, and color.
As there is growing control and intentionality to a child’s mark making, one will find story telling emerges from lines that only the child might understand. Where previous marks were exclusively about the crayon (or paint) and the paper, the purely kinesthetic evolves into more imaginative thinking.
Pre-representational Attempts (4 to 7 years):
Enclosure Stage (pre-symbolic/symbolic) and the Beginning of Storytelling
Paper, clay and other materials become a target for action as children gain control of their mark making and explore lines, marks, repeated actions and colors. With this growing experience, children explore dividing spaces and creating enclosures. Children enter the enclosure stage when they have established enough control of motor activity and their materials. In paint, they begin to draw enclosed shapes purposely. A line might join itself, for example, creating a circle. In 3D materials, they start carefully forming shapes. Besides this motion or kinesthetic development, a lot of great thinking occurs at this stage. By drawing or painting enclosed shapes, children realize they can create boundaries. Enclosures become places that can contain things inside and out. Children can repeat and vary shapes of growing complexity and inventiveness.
As children move through this pre-symbolic stage, their work evolves into storytelling. Children start to name their enclosed shapes. For example, naming a circle as her mother. As at this stage of development, children are not yet planning in advance to make a preconceived painting and their ideas and naming changes frequently. For example, Azalea added a curve next to a circle to make it into a heat. She intentionally picked the same white color so that three lines together form a more complex enclosed shape.Their creation is still based on exploring different materials. Children have yet to establish a color-object relationship at this stage of development but they are sensitive and interested in different colors. It is a good time for teachers to introduce more colors and encourage them to experiment with color mixing.
Pre-representational Stage (Symbol/Schema-making and Storytelling) - Imagination (7 to 9 years)
During children’s pre-representational stage, symbol-making and representational activity emerges as children begin to name the configurations and designs created. They start to gain awareness of their larger environment and grow out of egocentric perspective, detecting relationships and making connections among objects and people (like shown in the representational art work below).
Sometimes children will name lines at an early stage and start naming things again when they start to make complex designs. At other times, children will name things early and continue to do so. The subjects of the art works children make during this stage are usually not stable, “quite often names or stories are attached to the early configuration only to change five minutes later and then to change again five minutes after that.” In addition, children start to understand the lines, shapes, colors and configurations can stand for experiences of the real and the imaginary world.
As shown in the artwork below, the child starts to show the concept of perspectives and space with its different components. The component of symbol-making during this stage is related to two abilities: 1. learning to make connections between ideas about materials and ideas about the world and 2. learning to construct, or shape, representational concepts. While children start to name and give certain stories to their art works, personal experiential meaning will be embodied in the work and make it more than a design piece. As the stage develops, there will gradually be the emergence from an object to two objects together, a space of things, and shift from self to others in children’s art works.
Group8_Heidi_MaWenBo _boy_8yrs
Representational Stage - Observation (9 to 13 years)
During this stage of aesthetic development there is a greater awareness of self and its relationship to others. With the awareness of self, comes the realization of independence and the dependence that some groups might present, therefore children will become more aware of who and what is depicted in their artwork.
You will see in the “8 year old” artwork (Group8_Heidi_MaWenBo _boy_8yrs), the need to depict the part of the experiences that were “profound” i.e. the peaks of the rolling mountains, the presence of animals, the enclosed feeding area, the homes that were facing each other, the pebbled support beam extending from one home, and the forest in the distance. The child needed to make space for all of these memories.
At 8, children are able to remember a great deal about an environment or people that make an impression. There is a heightened awareness of the experience but not a full emotional investment, which is why we don’t see an existence of enormously detailed areas. Instead, there is more of a brief display of what was present in the environment. There is greater attention to people and their activities.
In adolescence, self-awareness and peer-awareness are further explored. Children who refine their observations and memories will show closer detail as shown in the “12 year old” clay sculptures (Group8_Figures in Movement Series_coed_12 and 13 yr). One student was so fascinated with a specific type of body that she searched multiple body figures to use as a source and yet was ultimately dissatisfied with how she projected her “perfect” female figure. Anatomically, what she wanted wasn’t possible yet through this exercise she grew in her understanding of and skill in re-presenting body forms.
Children in this stage start to question how to present all of the things that they see or remember in an experience. At this stage, the creative comfort with making subject decisions is explored.
Group8_Figures in Movement Series_coed_12 and 13 yrs
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