Research Article

The Development of Expressive Drawing Abilities during Childhood and into Adolescence

Table 1

Description of the basic expressive techniques.

Expressive techniqueDescription

LiteralExpressive drawings featuring facial expression cues (e.g., happy face with a smile versus frowning face with tears). Nonhuman topics are personified.

MetaphoricalExpressive drawings featuring abstract and/or content cues. “Abstract cues” refer to changes in the formal properties of the drawings, such as lines (e.g., light, thin versus dark, heavy), color (e.g., warm and bright versus cold and dark), and size (e.g., oversized versus undersized). “Content cues” refer to changes in the figurative aspects of the drawings, such as weather (e.g., sunshine versus clouds, storms, and rain), season (e.g., spring, flowers versus winter, fallen leaves, absent vegetation), state (e.g., radiant versus damaged or mutilated object), and sociability (e.g., people playing, animals, gifts versus loneliness, empty surroundings).

Literal and metaphoricalExpressive drawings combining facial expression cues with abstract and/or content cues.