Kate LaTour

Art

Stages of Artistic Development

Student one is a 9-year-old female student. She drew a picture of her dream that

included characters she has seen in games. On the Ewards scale I would put her in The Stage of

Realism because she wants her drawings to look realistic like the characters, she was trying to

draw real characters and they look very similar. However, there are some inconsistencies with

realistic size. For example, the dinosaur and scary girl being the same size while she is tiny. In

Lowenfeld’s model she would be in the Dawning Realism Stage because she is adding lots of

detail to her drawing to make it more realistic and accurate.

Student two is a 9-year-old female. She drew a dog. The dog is small. It is floating in

space but is sitting in a realistic position. There are details in the drawing like fur, paw shape,

and ears. Based on this information student two falls into Lowenfeld’s Dawning Realism Stage

and Ewards Stage of Complexity because the focus is on something other people will enjoy

(dog) and is not concerned about where it is regarding space.

Student three is a 10-year-old female. She drew a picture of a girl she calls Amanda!

From looking at the picture there is not a lot of concern for space or really detail. It is hard to

say if she was going for realism or just wanted it to look goofy. She was also very hesitant to

give me a picture. We looked through lots of drawings, but she kept saying how none of them

were her favorite and that she had better ones at home. Because of this I believe she is in
Lowenfeld’s Stage of Dawning Realism because she is becoming self-aware of her art and

Ewards Stage of Complexity because she is trying to achieve realism.

Student four is a 9-year-old male. He drew Doctor Mayhem. I am not sure if he made

this up or saw this somewhere, but it is very creative. It has realistic details of a doctor including

a lab coat, light on its head, and closed toed shoes showing some schematic development. Then

it includes some type of sword as the superhero’s weapon. The drawing is relatively small and is

floating in space. I put student four in Lowenfeld’s Schematic Stage because drawing is free and

represents concepts of what a doctor mixed with a superhero would look like. In Edwards, I

believe this student is in Stage of Complexity because he is more concerned with how it looks

over where things are.

All these students are in a stage completely normal for their age. Depending on many

different factors students their age can be anywhere from the schematic stage to the dawning

realism stage. There were many great examples of the typical stages for students this age

within the drawings I picked. I think this is a great tool for teachers to use to not only see what

their students are capable of to plan art activities but also get some insight as to where they are

developmentally. My goal as a teacher is to find out what stage my students are in so I can plan

activities where all students feel like they are being challenged and they feel like this is

something they can succeed at. This my look like creating Tab stations where students in

different stages may be more drawn to different stations so everyone gets to do a project right

for where they are at.

Student One:
Student Two:
Student Three:

Student Four: