The Discovery Of The Child

HAP T E R XXI

DRAWING AND REPRESENTATIVE ART

THE exercises which we have described as drawing were really an
education of the hand intended to prepare it for writing. They
were determined as an element in that complex preparation leading
the small hand of the child, still uncertain in its motor co-ordina-
tions, to execute that minute form of drawing known as writing.
These elements, or factors, which are separated from one another
(as we have seen from the movements leading up to writing) in order
that they may move towards a synthesis which, in the case of
writing, is one of the most characteristically " explosive,** some-
times become an element which may be made to combine with
other different syntheses. Thus this particular drawing which we
have described becomes also an artistic element, a co-efficient of
drawing proper. It is, therefore, neither drawing nor writing, but
is a starting point for both.

Today one hears a good deal about * free * drawing, and for
many people it is a matter of surprise that I have set up such rigid
restrictions for drawing for the children, who are obliged to
compose geometrical figures and then fill them in while holding
their pencils in a special way, or who are limited to filling in with
coloured pencils figures already drawn, I therefore feel obliged to