First Drawings of Animals
Many of the characteristics observable in the child’s treatment of the human figure reappear in his mode of representing animal forms. This domain of child-art follows quickly on the first. Children’s interest in animals, especially quadrupeds, leads them to draw them at an early stage. In prescribed exercises, moreover, the cat and the duck appear to figure amongst the earliest models. An example of this early attempt to draw animals has been given above (p. 334, Fig. 1).
The first crude attempts about the age of three or four to draw animal forms exhibit great incompleteness of conception and want of a sense of position and proportion. In one case the head seems to be drawn, but no body—if, indeed, head and body are not confused; and in others where a differentiation of head and trunk is attempted there is no clear local separation, or if this is attempted there is no clear indication of the mode of connexion (see, for example, Fig. 43 (a)). In the case of animals the side view is for obvious reasons hit on from the first. But, needless to say, there is no clear representation of the profile head. As a rule we have the front view, or at least the insertion of the two eyes. Both eyes appear in Mr. Cooke’s illustrations of drawings of the cat by children between three and four (Fig. 43 (b)), as also commonly in drawings of horses. The position of the eyes is often odd enough, these organs being in one drawing by a boy of five pushed up into the ears (Fig. 43 (c)).273 The front view of the animal head along with profile body appears occasionally in savage drawings also.274 In some of children’s drawings we see traces of a mixed scheme. Thus I have a drawing by a boy of five in which a front view is reached by a kind of doubling of the profile (Fig. 43 (d)).
More remarkable than all, perhaps, we have in one case a clear instance of the scheme of the human face, the features, eyes, nose, and mouth being arranged horizontally to suit the new circumstances (Fig. 44 (a)). With this may be compared the accompanying transference of the animal ear to the human figure, though this suggests—especially in view of the pipe—a bit of jocosity on the part of the young draughtsman (Fig. 44 (b)).
The forms of both head and trunk vary greatly. In a few drawings I have found the extreme of abstract treatment in the drawing of the trunk, viz., by means of a single line, a device which, so far as I have observed, is only resorted to in the case of the human figure for the neck and the limbs. An example of this was given above in Fig. 1 (p. 334). The following drawing of a dog by a little girl between five and six years old illustrates the same thing (Fig. 44 (c)).275 On the other hand we see sometimes a tendency to give the trunk abnormal thickness, as if the model used had been the wooden toy-horse, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 44 (d)). Rectilinear instead of rounded forms occur, and the head is often triangular, these rectilinear contours being probably suggested by the teacher in his model schemes (see Fig. 44 (e)).
The legs are of course all visible. The strangest inattention to number betrays itself here. As we saw, a child in beginning his scribble-drawing piles on lines for the legs (see above, p. 334, Fig. 1). A girl between three and four years of age endowed a cat with two legs and a bird with three (see Fig. 45 (a) and (b)).276 A boy in his sixth year drew a quadruped with ten legs (Fig. 45 (c)). They are often drawn absurdly out of position. In more than one case I find them crowded behind, as in the accompanying drawing of some quadruped by the same little girl that drew the cat and the bird, and in a drawing of a mouse by another child about the same age, viz., three and a half years (Fig. 45 (d) and (e)). They commonly remain apart from one another throughout their course, following roughly a parallel direction. But this simple scheme is soon modified, first of all by enlarging the space between the fore and the hind legs, and then by introducing some change of direction answering to the look of the animal in motion. This is most easily effected by making the fore and the hind pair diverge downwards, as in Fig. 43 (b) and (c) (p. 373). In rarer cases the divergence appears between the two legs of the fore and of the hind pair (Fig. 45 (f)). The knee-bend is early introduced as a means of suggesting motion. Either the legs are all bent backwards, as in Fig. 45 (g) (cf. above, Fig. 44 (e)); or, with what looks like a perverted feeling for symmetry, each pair is bent inwardly, as in Fig. 45 (h). The forms are often extraordinary enough, a preternatural thickness of leg being not infrequently given, and the knee-joint occasionally taking on grotesque shapes as if the little draughtsman had just been attending a class on the anatomy of the skeleton. The hoof is drawn in a still freer manner, various designs, as the bird-foot, the circle, and the looped pattern, appearing here as in the case of the human foot (Fig. 45 (i) and (j); cf. Figs. 43 (c) and 44 (a) (p. 373)).
In this unlearned attempt to draw animal forms the child falls far below the level of the untutored savage. The drawings of animals by the North American Indians, by Africans, and others, have been justly praised for their artistic excellence. A fine perception of form is, in many cases, at least, clearly recognisable, the due covering of one part by another is represented, and movement is vigorously suggested. Lover though he is of animals, the child, when compared with the uncivilised adult, shows himself to be woefully ignorant of his pets.