Most children enjoy drawing and creating art from a very early age. It is only when dealing with the awkwardness and new pressures of adolescence that many children become frustrated in their attempts at realism and abandon artistic pursuits. Parents and other caregivers can help a child maintain an interest in art by encouraging him to explore different media, such as watercolor, ink or clay sculpture.
Emergent Stage
Typically, by age two a child's fine motor skills have developed enough to allow him to grasp a crayon or marker. A child with paper and a writing utensil soon discovers the joy of making something appear that was not there before. This first stage of artistic expression, sometimes called the manipulative or scribbling stage, contains three phases.
In the first phase of the emergent stage, the child scribbles randomly, usually moving the whole arm while manipulating the crayon. As fine motor skills develop further, the child enters the second phase, controlled scribbling. Loops often become smaller and more circular. In the final phase, named scribbling, the scribbles represent things or people, such as "ball" or "mama."
Storytelling Stage
Between ages three and five, a child transitions into the storytelling stage of art. Though the images are still unrecognizable to most people, they represent people, things or events. If you ask a child in this stage about his picture, he may describe a surprisingly complex scenario. For example, though you may see two circles and a blob, the child may tell you, "This is when me and mommy went to the zoo and saw an elephant."
Realism Stage
Children usually enter the early phase of the realism stage between ages five and eight. This first phase is characterized by landscape drawing. The child is beginning to understand spatial concepts and often draws a line, representing the ground, on which the other images in the picture stand or rest. The sky may be represented by the sun, clouds or birds.
Later in the realism stage, children add details to their drawings in an attempt to make the subject look as lifelike as possible. For example, when drawing the family dog, a child in this phase may add lines for whiskers and jagged edges to represent shaggy fur.
Adolescent Stage
Adolescence is a critical period in art development. Most children become frustrated with their inability to create an exact copy of what they see. This is also when children compare their abilities with their peers' abilities. A child can easily become discouraged if he feels that his friend is a better artist. Children often find it easier to give up on drawing, not understanding that practice and persistence will improve their skills. People who give up on artistic pursuits at this point rarely return to them later in life.
