Culture plays a large role in many things - from what we eat to how we dress - and it even has an effect on the minutae of life - like whether or not drawing will enter into a child’s repertoire of behavior.
For instance, studies have shown that Taiwanese-American & Chinese-American parents tend to plan more drawing time for their children than they European-American counterpart parents do. As a result of more time spent drawing, Taiwanese-American and Chinese-American children’s drawings have been judged as being more advanced than those of their counterparts.
According to research carried out in 1983, when children are provided with drawing materials and encouragement they tend to create works that reflect their particular culture - and each culture has its own ’style’. For example, French children tend to spend a good deal of time on drawing, filling the entire page with large, colorful designs, drawings by Japanese children meanwhile tend to be more complex, harmonious and complete than drawings by North-American children. Children from the island of Bali on the other hand, use many small and intricate marks to draw complex, colorful designs which fill the page.
While many cultures use and value drawing as art, there are a few cultures that show no evidence of drawing at all.
The children from the island of Ponape have no prior drawing experience. However, a recent study found that Ponape children that were given drawing materials tended to draw by starting in the center of the page making shapes that connected outward like groups of linked bubbles - they also tended not to fill the page and used only one color per drawing.
When children from cultures that do not include drawing are first introduced to the tools, they tend to experiment, scribble, or attempt realistic drawings right from the start. There seems to be great variation in first attempts. However, in general, it has been found that children tend to draw from a cultural perspective, imitating the designs reflected in fabrics, architecture or other aspects of the adult culture including symbol systems such as written letters or characters and numerals.
Culture then … confines and defines the art of children.
Children from ‘First World’ countries and continents like Europe, Australia and the USA have many opportunities to draw and color and are encouraged to do so by their parents, teachers and other caregivers. Material is plentiful too with crayons, paper, coloring books and even online resources in plentiful supply. Little boys tend to enjoy coloring pictures that represent what they sees every day such as cars, trucks and machinery while little girls enjoy coloring images of fairytale scenes - however you can seldome go wrong with Disney characters as most children have a favourite and at sites like Disney Coloring Pages you’ll find many disney coloring
With both encouragement and resources a-plenty, our children are very lucky to have both the means and the support to express themselves creatively through drawing and colouring.
