Issue 3.2: Graphic Gesture Evolution

The action of drawing consist of represent some object or part of the reality in a graphical way, it can be used both for entertainment or as a way to express something. It's a very personal think and sometimes only the person who has drawn the picture can explain the meaning of all the details that it has inside.

There are three aspects related to the development in the graphic gesture evolution, firs of all, the development of the motor skills, because the quality of the drawings evolve together with drawer's maturation. It's no related with the capacities, because some people draw better than others just as some people sing better than others, but also with the age, as long as the segments of the body presents on the proximodistal law take part of the drawing tools, the draw quality improves too.

Secondly we have the cognition which is the perception of the object of reality we are drawing, according to is it is representing the reality (symbolic way) or making the draw similar to the reality (realistic way). I think this two concepts are needed to take into account when drawing with kids, because once they develop the self-esteem, thinks like finding out they draw terrible but some classmates of them draw perfectly can make them feel inferior, just because they try all the time to represent the reality, and we have to teach them that (for example) the house we are asking them to draw doesn't need to exist, or doesn't has to be exactly the same way that it is in real life.

Finally we have the affective development, which is related with the indirect message that a draw can give to us. In other words, a kid can draw an specific thing but key questions such as if he or she likes or doesn't like what he or she's drawing can be find implicit in the draw. That was present in this draw of the house that a girl for first cycle of primary education did, a part from the house in this draw we can see her family, which is composed of her mother, her sister Anna, and then there is a male figure, which is distanced from the three girls and doesn't have name, could be the father or the mother's boyfriend. This girl didn't mean to show this when draw her house, but it comes naturally to  her to draw the member of the family that she feels less attached on a bit separated from the other.

There are four stages in the graphic gesture evolution, the first one is called the motor or scribbling stage, and as the name itself says, is the stage in which the kid is not drawing for any artistic or personal reason but only to develop their psychomotor abilities by moving the arm and hand and drawing scribbling. The second stage is the representative stage, in this stage the result start being important, so the drawing is not only a psychomotor action but an artistic creation. This stage is divided in two parts, the subjective realism and the conceptual realism, the second one is where the kid starts to focused in the figurative intention, they can start adding details and also some movement figures, such as wind.

The third stage is the communicative one and it is referred to the time when students first realized on the message that the draw can give to them; so it is also divided in two parts, first of all we have the analytic intention based on observation, which is the part where a children can understand the message given by another person by a drawing, and secondly the representative intention, which refers to the time when a kid is capable to give a message to the his or her own drawing.

Finally we have the realist stage in which the kid starts developing his o her artistic skills and just focus on making the picture beautiful and realistic. This is also the stage when the self-concept and the self-esteem take part, because is where the drawing skills can help and potentiate some student's drawing and can make other's look ugly. The main ideas we should have in mind are that the final product is not as important as the process, that is, if we are teaching a drawing technique is more important for us to make sure that the student develop the technique correctly and not if the final drawing is an art picture or it doesn't look really well. We shouldn't present a model all the time, because if a kid always see that his or her drawing is very different than the model he or she is supposed to copy the self-esteem can be affected too.