Hi. I've been lurking and have a question. At what age did your gifted child draw a person (complete with eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair, arms and fingers, legs and feet)? Thanks in advance for your replies.
Funny coincidence... DS at 5, but drawing is also something he is just recently having fun with. If you ask me next year, I bet I'll say "DD at 2.5" because she is almost doing that now. She looooves drawing.
(My sis is artistically gifted & did this at age 2.)
I know this, because I keep a photo website with an art page for family:
Ds2 drew his first person at 27 months. It had a head, mouth, eyes with pupils, hair, stick legs and stick arms (no torso). Two months later, he drew a more complete person (me) with a head, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, torso, hair, breasts and nipples (can you tell he's breastfed??), stick legs and stick arms. I take that back. He didn't draw arms on that one.
Ds1 drew extremely detailed things at 3 1/2 and remains very artistic to this day, but he didn't really draw people. He drew a lot of machinery and things like "cars inside of suitcases inside of cars". I just found a person or two. It looks like he was 3 1/2 when he was drawing people with torsos and regular parts. He built a lot of identifiable things prior to then, but he didn't really start drawing representationally until 3. By 3 1/2, he was drawing with tremendous detail.
My son started at about two. He is now 4 1/2 and draws people with eye sockets around the eyes, eyebrows, teeth & other very specific details. He draws their clothes, a landscape line or other environmental markers, with thought bubbles representing their thoughts or dreams, which is a whole other detailed pictures. He also draws sea creatures, monsters, houses, animals and landscapes with accuracy. But keep in mind, drawing is a strength, and his daddy is a super talented artist (IMHO
) and something that he and daddy do together in their one-on-one time.
My daughter did this by age 2. My son, who is much less artistically inclined, probably didn't do it until after he turned 3 (he only drew numbers and letters).
My older one, ds, did not even atempt a representational drawing until at least age 4. AND, I initiated it because I was honestly concerned about his artistic development. I would draw a circle for a head, and I'd draw an eye and a mouth and ask him to draw what was missing (th other eye, the nose, ears, hair...) He wasn't super into creating art at a young age, which was funny to us given he was downright obsessed with art museums from age 2! He is now, at 6, an amazing artist but he prefers cartoon-y/ caricature type drawings, abstract stuff, and particularly enjoys drawing flying eyeballs at the moment.
Dd, who will be 3 in March, has much better fine motor control than my left-handed son did at that age. Nonetheless, she seems uninterested in creating accurate, representational art. She is happy with three colorful dots on a page-- a red baby, a green baby, and a purple baby. And then she can go on to create a story about her dot-babies and play in her mind for ages...
My son will turn 7 next month and still draws stick figures. The stick figures have only the necessary "equipment" to identify their character in whatever scene he is drawing. He'll draw a huge battle scene of pirates, but the objects have scarce lines with few details. A pirate might have a handy pirate hat with feather, a patch over one eye, and a sword. But he's a stick-figure pirate and may not even have feet. There are ships and cannons and fires, but only the barest of lines necessary.
Dd drew a picture of the family when she was just under 3 yrs old. There were 3 figures, each with a head, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, arms, hands, legs and feet.
She hasn't drawn people much at all. But she draws a lot of flowers and fruit.
Right around her second birthday, Rain would draw people with heads, eyes, hair, legs, breasts, and knees. I did actually have to ask her what the last two were, because they were sort of colored-in circles, with the breasts about a third of the way down the legs, and the knees 2/3 of the way down. I did save some of these pictures in case they were an early sign of something, although I'm not sure what. Within the next 6 months or so she did add arms...
My oldest started drawing people around age 2. Now at 5 he draws skyscrapers on fire with people jumping out the window (to safety I hope
they ARE smiling....). He also draws multi-paged scenes. A neighborhood with a storm in the distance, then the tornado, dark clouds, and lightening (complete with parts of buildings flying around), followed by the neighborhood in shambles after the storm, with broken houses and upside-down cars.
We don't know whether to be proud of his accomplishments, or a little worried about the content....
She drew a picture of a stick person with arms, legs, head, hands, feet, eyes, nose, mouth just before she turned 2...we framed it. It was his father's day gift that year so that was June and she turned 2 in July, 23 mos..duh
at 2. but amidst the other things she was doodling. it was never all teh time. suddenly out fo the blue she drew a figure and then wouldnt do it for a long time and then started again. i would say she started regularly at 3. but figures were boring. so she drew snowmen pooping and peeing while laughing her head off. but she has never really been a drawing girl. more a glue and scissors girl.
What enjoyable replies! Thanks. I asked this question because my daughter has been drawing recognizable human figures since age 2. I believe she is quite bright, but I don't think she falls under the 'gifted' umbrella. Is it atypical to be drawing in this manner at 2 1/2? She has also started adding flowers, grass, sunshine, and worms. She recently draw a beautiful, recognizable picture of "Daddy singing in a flower garden". Love it!
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