There are four stages of children’s art, each reflecting child’s level of self-awareness and their relationship to their family. Set Decorators must consider what rentable artwork fits their character’s age range. As a child grows from ages three to ten, their artwork shows a clear path originating in scribbles and ending with brilliant storytelling! Our collection at Rufus Art Rentals fits into each developmental stage. 

Scribbling: Ages Twelve Months to One Year

Around twelve months old, children develop the fine motor control required to handle a pencil. Following this milestone, the artist’s journey starts with a scribble.

Our young motor skills begin, interestingly, with ‘left to right’ motions across the page. We advance next to ‘up and down’, followed by circular movement. In this stage, children are exploring the emergence of colour onto the page with joyful abandon. At one-year-old, mark-making explores beyond the edges of a piece of paper. Unfortunately for parents, these early drawings can escape the edges of paper entirely as the child explores drawing on walls and furniture. (Sorry, Mom).

By the second birthday, children’s art advances when displaying control in the scribbles. Simple shapes emerge, such as circles, swirls, dots and colour fields, paving a way to the next stage, Pre-symbolism.

Pre-symbolism: Ages Three to Four Years

At age three, our little artist beings combining shapes and lines to make simple figures. At this heartwarming age parents can expect to see their first family portrait. Set Decorators can easily identify this age range from the distinct figures. At ages three to four, children draw bodies as one circle, with arms and legs emerging directly from this shape. As kids learn the basics they often omit fingers, hands or feet, but include the ever-iconic smiling face!

Image Source: Wikipedia commons. Click image for more information.

Similar to Medieval artwork, figures are spaced in relation to the child’s opinion of their importance. People playing an important role have an imposing scale. Illuminated medieval manuscript paintings share this system of conveying main characters.

In this illustration from Paris, France, the figures stand or sit with their feet touching the bottom if the artwork, making each character equal distance from the artist. Yet, their one character on the right looms over his companions. Illustrations in manuscripts, like this one, predate the Renaissance’s perfection of perspective and mastery of scale. Realistic scale doesn’t appear in children’s art until the fourth and final stage at age nine. Until then, we enter the Symbolism stage.

Image Source: Manuscript Miniatures. Click image for more information. 

Symbolism: Ages Five to Eight Years

We learned a newly acquired skill at five-years-old. We draw with symbols.

In the symbolism stage, a child finds one style in which to draw an animal, person or object, and repeats that symbol. Let’s use an example of a turtle. Each time they draw a turtle, the child draws the same shape, with small variations. 

Fascinatingly, a child develops their own set of symbols, unique to their art style. These aren’t necessarily based on reality; the symbols are grown from the child’s perspective on the world. Therefore, each child has a unique set of figures that make repeat appearances in their artwork.

Almost exclusively, these symbolic figures are grounded in space with a skyline, green grass or blue water. From five to eight years old, our symbols, always stand on this line as it divides the page. We see an amazing example of this with our artwork entitled, “Turtle Parade.”

Realism: Age Nine 

Eventually, children’s artwork changes one last time. It is a stage of struggle, when they realize that their symbols are too limiting and their imagination is greater than their ability to draw. This is when your turtles in top hats just don’t capture the full breadth of turtle personalities.

In seriousness, for many kids this stage is a crossroads. The child sees the importance of documenting their world more accurately, but may not have the ability yet. This frustration may destroy their confidence, forcing them to give up drawing and encouragement and art instruction are key to continuing to draw. Motivated children will push themselves to develop the fine motor control to express their imagination. At this moment, a young artist emerges.