Part 1.
These paintings come from a ten-year-old boy who has been diagnosed with a fairly severe cause of autism. He has to have someone sitting next to him if he is going to make art. He was supplied with a variety of sponges and paint to make patterns. Their repetitive nature comes from the fact that if you do not prompt him in a different direction, he keeps doing the same thing over and over.
When I look at the paintings at lower left, lower right and upper right, I am somewhat surprised that this is only a ten-year-old making the work. The one in the upper left hand corner looks like the same sponge blotted over and over again (although cleaned and used with different colors in between). The one on the right seems to show a sort of sleigh left in white against a green background. It could also be a reclining human figure on a sort of sled. Either way, I look at the picture and think of someone in flight, as the sled or sleigh appears to be in the air. When it comes to metaphor and creativity, it is important to note that “creativity is not dependent on students inventing totally unique and individual projects. Rather, it is more about working within given parameters, where students are able to regard the same or similar situations differently” (Rentz n.d., Web). So this young artist showed creativity by taking a simple set of tools (sponges and paints) and coming up with an elaborate work that sparks such different responses in the viewer.
The lower right and left hand paintings both look like floats that one might see at a Mardi Gras parade, or perhaps a Chinese New Year parade. The lower right looks like a ferocious beast, tuned toward the viewer with his mouth open wide. The lower left looks like a ship on fire, heading in an oblique direction away from the viewer. The emotional fire in these paintings is greater than the two upper paintings. It could be that the lower paintings were made later in the session, as the artistic impulse might have had more time to percolate inside the artist’s mind. The brightness and variety of color are considerable given the amount of redirection the young artist seems to need in order to change the direction of the work. There is almost nothing in those lower two paintings that looks like the result of repetitive motions that needed correction in some way.
This brings us to an important point – the difference between “the descriptive and the evaluative senses of the phrase ‘a work of art’” (Brandl 2012, web). When one looks at something and considers it a work of art descriptively, there is more of a sense of appreciation in that process than there is when one looks at the same object and considers it a work of art evaluatively. The descriptive sense appreciates the creative elements of the work, while the evaluative sense compares those elements with what one thinks a work of art “should” be like or has an obligation to accomplish. Frankly, that judgment of representation is something that should be as obsolete as the insistence on exact linear perspective, but it has not turned out that way.
Part 2
Quite frankly, it is difficult to make much of an assessment as far as a learning disorder simply by looking at the work of art in question, especially without knowing the age of the artist. It seems fairly clear that the artist does not have much training or skill in three-dimensional representation, and the hasty movements of the crayons indicate that the flat nature of this fantastical creature comes from either youth or perhaps a delay. Note that the four legs are all placed side by side. The quick drawing on the tail, the purple body and the lighter shade of the head shows a bit of haste to fill in the lines with the right color, but the furry trim up one side of the neck and around most of the head shows a great deal more care.
So if I had to speculate as to the demographics of the artist in question, I would guess that it is someone in the early elementary years (K-2) with either no delay or some minor delay. If it were an older student, (3-5) I would hazard a speculation as to a mild delay either in processing or in expression. There is a lot of attention paid to the detailing as the artist has taken care to detail the hooves of this creature and even given it that benign smile that characterizes so many drawn animals from the imaginations of young artists. I do know that I would not want to be standing on the wrong end of that tail. This shows the difficulty of assessing learning delays from art – but also the ways in which art allows students suffering from delays to express themselves creatively (NCLD 2009, web).
Part 3
So to help the student who drew this intriguing creature figure out how to draw with a bit of three-dimensional perspective, I would give him a project that shows him how to draw a scene with perspective vanishing off to one point in the distance. The most basic way to do this is to have the point in the center of the drawing (meaning at a point on an invisible line down the center). I would start by showing the student some GIFs and pictures of scenes that disappear down the middle, such as a shot down a long hallway or a car or train moving down a road or a track into the distance. I would point out several elements that these model images have in common: the closer objects being at the bottom of the picture and the more distant objects to appear near the horizon line, which is a horizontal line that runs through the point at which perspective is supposed to vanish. Objects might go straight up from their position in relation to the viewer, but as objects become more distant, they get closer to the horizon line – but do not go above it.
I would print out a picture in which this one-point perspective appears and give the student some tracing paper. Then I would model tracing the lines from the perspective onto the tracing paper and help him with the process of completing those lines. I would have the student begin by drawing the lines from the foreground to that perspective point and then drawing the horizon line across the paper through the point where those lines would meet. Then I would have the student draw his own details for the picture, reminding him that closer objects go below that horizontal line, closer to the viewer (and larger and further down the closer they are), and more distant objects get smaller and closer to that horizon line.
Once he has completed the entire picture that began with the traced lines, I will give him the opportunity to complete other drawings that begin with a series of lines like that (the two perspective lines moving toward that point followed by the horizon line), drawn in pencil so that he can erase them afterward. After that will come the filling in of details so that he can populate the drawing however he chooses. This is just one step in moving toward the realistic representation of three-dimensional scenes, I envision this taking a couple of weeks to teach over the course of three or four art classes. If the artist is the same one as the one who loved to use those sponges over and over (from Part 1), then it’s likely that he will want to make an entire series of drawings that vanish into that sort of distant horizon, whether he has autism or not. After all, if you look through the drawing portfolios of many artists, you will see the same task repeated, over and over again, as they work to make sure that they have mastered an ability. Then they seek to expand on it as their understanding grows. With any luck, that is what would happen for this student.
References
Brandl, M. (2012). Art history, 2: The end as we know it. Metaphor and Art.
http://www.metaphorandart.com/
NCLD (2009). Learning disabilities and the arts. LD Online.
http://www.ldonline.org/article/30031/
Rentz, J. (n.d.) Metaphor, creativity and art practice. New South Wales Department of
Education and Training. http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/secondary/creativearts/asset s/visualarts/pdf/metaphor.pdf
