My little girl turned two in May and has always been very fond of drawing. She loves it when we draw little pictures for her and she’ll spend an hour or more at a time just scribbling on her own.
Recently, at what seems like a very early age to me, she’s started showing some actual skill in drawing. She likes to draw triangles, the letter “A”, and faces. She doesnt’ just scribble and then name what she drew, but she draws with purpose and with pretty decent fine-motor skills/ and hand-eye coordination. She holds her pen properly as well.
When do children normally begin drawing like this? Is this early or is she right in line w/ normal development? It seems early to me but I really don’t know.
She’s obviously a genius and her work will surely be hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago someday? Right? Right?
Well, that’s a picture of her Mom, Shocker Khan, not me… And no, that’s not a moustache… The straight line is the mouth. Not sure what the circle under the mouth was supposed to be.
I would say she is advanced in that she added features and details, but there are usually a few in a class at that age that can do that (typically girls). So she is probably ahead of many of her peers, but not astoundingly so. “Head of the class in that skill set”, not “prodigy”.
Kids at that age usually have a skill or 2 that they are ahead of others on, and are more in the normal range or behind on others. This makes sense if your daughter likes to draw and spends a lot of time on it, that she would be good at it. My son at that age did not like to color or draw much so she would be way ahead of him, but he was very good at things like puzzles and blocks - things that involved spatial relationships because that is what he enjoyed and spent most of his time doing.
I highly recommend figuring out a way to store the most precious pieces of artwork that your little Picasso creates. There is going to be alot of them.
My mother was in education and her assessment was that the more details a child included in an artwork, the more intelligent the child. At the age of 2 it’s almost impossible to be able to see if the child has the creative vision to be a prodigy. Being a fine artist is more than just technical detail. They have to be able to create a work of art from their own head.
Anyway, the more detail/smarter hypothesis worked well for my own kids. I watched their drawings. The drawing would often parallel their mental development. My child who loves art now and is most likely to choose a path in the creative arts was no better nor worse at drawing than her siblings at that age. Of course, she is not a prodigy, just a girl who likes to draw. (Although she drew pictures just like in the OP at the age of 2.)
My daughter’s first “face” was made at 27 months. (It’s still hanging on my office door seven years later.) It has two eyes, a nose, mouth, hair scribbled up top, and some stuff below the head that may be the indication of a very small body. The drawings from a year later are not a whole lot more advanced.
At nine she’s quite an accomplished little artist and has contributed three covers to the local magazine my wife and I publish. (And yes, she’s our daughter, but I have a degree in visual design/illustration and would not put her work in our magazine if it weren’t presentable enough.)
I think that many children develop their artistic talents at a similar rate through grade school–though a few are somewhat better than others–however many children STOP drawing at some point and move on to other interests. Those who continue to draw often develop further, while most adults can’t draw with much more skill than they could in, say, fifth grade.
My daughter, who’s now 3.5, draws the same way, and has been since she was about 2.5. Actually she has gotten better, but in the last month or so she hasn’t drawn a thing really. Maybe I should make her draw more so she can support us when we get old!
