Developmental stages in children’s drawings of a cube and a doll

Aaro Toomela

University of Tartu

Abstract. Drawing developments of cubes and human figures are often described in taxonomies with very little in common. We created a taxonomy based on the basic principles of Luquet (1927) and Willats (1997). Children’s (N = 757; age range 2–13) and adults’ (N = 232; age range 17–43) drawings of a doll were compared with their drawings of a cube. The data suggest that the proposed stages appear in an invariant order: First children draw only Scribbles or Patterns; next Volume-Prototypes emerge; after that 2-D-Exemplar drawings develop; and finally 3-D-Exemplar drawings can be achieved. The same developmental sequence characterises the drawings of both a cube and a doll (human figure).