Children’s Artistic Development in Painting:

Three to ten year olds

Exploration: motions and the marks they make

Three year olds and beginners start by exploring the

materials.They mix all the colors together and then discover they can make various kinds of lines

and patches of color, mixed and unmixed.

Control of the material

Four year olds have learned to control ways of using lines,

shapes, and colors. They make arrangements on the picture

surface that reflect their growing awareness of the nature of the material and their own activity.

Designing

• With experience, four, five and six year olds are able to elaborate and combine lines, shapes and color in many different ways to make designs. Notice the way each child repeats and varies the basic elements to make a design.

Early Representation

• When they are painting, four and five year olds often discover that a shape they have made suggests a person, animal or object. Gradually they begin to plan ahead what they are going to make. Their repetoire gained during designing is used in their creation of imagery.

Representation of simple images

Five, six and seven year olds use simple images of people,animals, vehicles,plants

buildings. They begin to have a narrative that is about themselves and their immediate

experiences, lived or imagined.

Looking at Art: Designs

5, 6, and 7 year olds

1: What are some things you notice that these paintings have in common?

2: How are they different?3: What kinds of shapes/ lines textures

patterns do you see here ?4: Where do you see mixed or blended

colors?

What is a design?

• Emma: curvy lines and shapes and dots• Jesse: anything you want, all kinds of colors• Serena: all kind of shapes and sizes• Malik: you can mix colors together• Charlie: wavy lines• Liana: it’s something you make that’s not real,-tie-dyed• Kira: stripes and circles• Teddy: zigzags, like staircases

Representation of richer symbols: eight to10 year olds

Subject: less focused on themselves, more with others, they relate to the experiences of people living in other places and timesPeople: images are more defined, have joints that bend,usually without muscle or sense of bone structure, careful consideration to clothingSpace: consideration of objects in the distance,format expands to occupy the whole paperColor: carefully considered as an important fact

Looking at Art: Representations7-10 year olds

• 1: What are some things you notice that these paintings have in common?

• 2: How are they different?• 3: Which painting stands out for you? Why?• 4: What could the theme of this painting be?• 5: How did the artist show near or far away?• 6: Which colors did the artist mix or blend?• 7. What are some ways you think the artist used his

brush here and here?