"Explores child art as an expression of visual thinking--the symbol-making function of the brain which produces images rather than words ... with more than 200 examples in color and black and white"--Back cover.

This book examines the development of drawing and painting from several currently dominant theoretical perspectives and examines empirical data on the art work of children who are ordinary, talented, emotionally disturbed, and atypically developed due to

History is presented with a personal viewpoint of how and why it may have happened.

This lavishly illustrated book gives a comprehensive and scholarly account of children's understanding and appreciation of art and their developing ability to produce their own pictures. It discusses the main influences on children's picture-making, and considers the intriguing question, does children's art follow the same pattern of development as the history of art? As well as discussing the artistic development of typically developing children, the book also includes a discussion of children with intellectual disabilities and those with a talent for art, some of whom are children with autism.

The message of this book is a simple one: children learn to draw by acquiring increasingly complex and effective drawing rules. In this regard, learning to draw is like learning a language, and as with language children use these rules creatively, making infinite use of finite means. Learning to draw is thus, like learning a language, one of the major achievements of the human mind. Theories of perception developed in the second half of the 20th century enable us to construct a new theory of children's drawings that can account for their many strange features. Earlier accounts contained valuable insights, but recent advances in the fields of language, vision, philosophy, and artificial intelligence now make it possible to resolve the many contradictions and confusions inherent in these early writings. John Willats has written a book that is accessible to psychologists, artists, primary and junior schoolteachers, and parents of both gifted and normal children.

Alongside everyday reality, the young child develops a rich imaginary world of child art, make-believe play, imaginary friends, fairy tales and magic. This book charts the imaginative development of children, conveying the importance of art-making in childhood years, and highlighting the potential that imaginative behaviors hold for development.

In Children and Pictures, Richard P. Jolley critiques both the historical and contemporary studies conducted in the field of children’s making and understanding of pictures. Some highlights of Children and Pictures are: What develops, and why, in children’s representational and expressive drawing, both in typical, atypical, and cross-cultural populations. The developing relationship between production and comprehension of pictures. Children’s understanding of pictures as symbolic representations. Practical and applied uses of drawings, particularly in clinical and legal settings. Diverse educational practices of teaching drawing across the world. Presenting up-to-date research and pointing towards future topics of study, Children and Pictures brings the study of children’s drawings into mainstream child development studies. This is an edifying resource for students, researchers, practitioners, parents, artists, and educators in the field.