Understanding Visual Perception and Artistic Techniques in Children

Posted on Dec 28, 2024 in Arts and Humanities

Understanding the Human Eye

Sclera

The sclera is the lining of the eyeball, except for the front. It is a fibrous, opaque membrane resistant to eye protection.

Retina

The retina is the light-sensitive surface that receives the image. It is in contact with the choroid. Images are projected in reverse and transmitted to the central nervous system. The retina has rods and cones. The optic nerve is connected to it.

Cones

Cones are photosensitive elements responsible for colors and visual acuity. They are sensitive to light stimuli.

Rods

Rods are photosensitive elements that only sense achromatic light stimuli.

Blind Spot

The blind spot is where the optic nerve starts in the retina. There are no cones or rods in this area.

Optic Nerve

Spatial Perception Techniques

ITEM 2:

  • Reduction in Size: If we draw different figures of different sizes on a uniform background, the smallest one gives the impression of being further away.
  • Partial Occultation: This occurs when an object partially covers another, impeding the vision of the total apparent contour of the second object. Children do not typically use this technique.
  • Height Level: If we draw several figures of the same size on a baseline, but one is higher than the others, we see the highest one as the farthest.
  • Shadows: The use of light and shadow is the main element of spatial perception. To express form objectively, shadow is essential. Shadows can be specific and planned.
    • Shadows Themselves: Acquired by the body when light affects its three-dimensional formations.
    • Cast Shadow: A body’s cast shadow may appear distorted depending on the light source’s situation concerning the illuminated body, the nature of light, and the observer’s viewpoint.
  • View Detail: Based on the representation of an object analytically, giving the feeling of being farthest when there are fewer details.
  • Aerial Perspective: Based on the change of hue and saturation of colors with distance. Its predecessor was Da Vinci, but Velázquez incorporated it into Las Meninas.
  • Linear Perspective: Based on the convergence of parallel lines at one point because our retina receives parallel lines as conical projections.

Color Theory

ITEM 3:

  • Color Light: A light source can emit white light, which contains all the wavelengths of colored light.
  • Subject Color: The reaction of substances to light. We receive the different qualities of things through their tone or pigmentation and visual texture. Mixing three light sources produces white, but mixing three pigments produces black.

Mixtures

  • Additive Mixtures: Light colors, color without matter. They are called this because they join in intensity. The resulting color has more light components than the primary colors. Primary colors of light are red, green, and blue. Secondary colors are complementary colors of light that, when mixed, produce white.
  • Subtractive Mixtures: Combinations with material colors or pigments. They subtract intensity because the resulting colors have fewer light components. When mixed, complementary colors produce black.

Qualities of Color

We can distinguish about 130 different shades, categorized as chromatic and achromatic.

  • Brightness-Photometric Value: The character, amount of light emitted or reflected. White has maximum light, and black has minimum light.
  • Hue: Colors in the spectrum of white light: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.
  • Saturation-Intensity: The purity of hue or richness a surface can reflect.

Color Relationship

The expression or beauty of color can be based on harmony or contrast.

  • Harmony: There must be a dominant unit of color broken by some element that provides variety.
  • Contrast: Based on the tradeoffs between the qualities of color.
    • Harmonious Relationships: Chroma key colors and ranges.
    • Contrasts: The sensation of a tone is conditioned by the colors around it. This produces distortions in the color depending on its location. There are three categories: value, hue, and complementary.
      • Contrast of Value: On a dark background, the same tone appears brighter.
      • Contrast of Hue: A medium tone on a cold or warm background moves in the opposite direction. For example, purple appears more reddish on a blue background and more bluish on a red background.
      • Contrast of Complementary: When two opposing complementary colors are placed together, the intensity of each increases.

Stages of Children’s Drawing

ITEM 5:

  • Pictorial Evocation: An attempt to update a graph obtained from a mental image in the child. It is free.
  • Entertainment or Graphic Fun: A double pleasure of gesture and leaving a footprint, utilizing space-paper.
  • Exercise: Aims to systematize graphic gesture, precise orientation in delimited space, and give rhythmic and repetitive character.
  • Writing Learning

Principles

The essential principle of a graphic gesture psychomotor education is experiencing the movement in space before experiencing the trajectory on paper.

Motivation

The teacher must adequately motivate children using items to create or recreate experiences that generate the need to express.

Selection Criteria for Stories

  • 2 to 3 years: Short, simple, clear ideas. These issues will be familiar to the children, like talking to children or pets (onomatopoeia).
  • 4 to 5 years: Overflowing fantasy, fantastic beings, things that fly, e.g., Cinderella, Pinocchio.
  • 5 to 6 years: Characters and echoes of goodness, virtue, devotion, e.g., Marcelino Pan y Vino.

Development of Scribbling

ITEM 6:

Starts at 18 months with disorderly strokes. By 4 years, it is classified into three stages:

  • Untidy Scribble: