A Study Regarding the Representation of the Sun in Young Children’s Spontaneous Drawings

José Villarroel,Xabier Villanueva

doi:10.3390/socsci6030095

Abstract

Drawing has historically been the preeminent way of portraying the observations of the sun. The study of the early stages of the development of astronomical thought and the examination of human graphic expression indicate this. With that in mind, it is interesting to note that young children very frequently draw the sun in their spontaneous depictions and, also, that there are preliminary indications that this fact might be related to their conceptual development. This study examines 279 pictures that children aged 4 to 8 spontaneously depicted, paying particular attention to their solar representations and the relationship that they have with other pictorial elements. The data is also related to children’s understanding of the inanimate nature of the sun. The results lend weight to the assumption that children do not draw the sun without intent and allow for adding fresh data to the growing body of research showing the importance of considering young children’s graphical expression when it comes to gaining insight into their understanding regarding natural phenomena.

Highlights

The study of the early stages of the development of astronomical thought and the examination of human graphic expression indicate this
Visual art witnesses human interest in solar observations. This is especially true from the seventeenth century on, when the sun, the sky and atmospheric phenomena became the subject of particular attention to landscape painters (Thornes 2000)
The present study aims to carry out an in-depth examination of the spontaneous representations of the sun appearing in young children’s drawings and it pursues the following key objectives: 1. To study the pictorial content of the drawings that children between 4 and 8 years of age freely carry out on a generic topic linked to the environment, with particular focus on the following issues: whether or not the sun is drawn, the pictorial characteristics through which the sun is displayed and the relation that this particular drawing presents with other pictorial elements

Summary

Introduction

The study of the early stages of the development of astronomical thought and the examination of human graphic expression indicate this. The results lend weight to the assumption that children do not draw the sun without intent and allow for adding fresh data to the growing body of research showing the importance of considering young children’s graphical expression when it comes to gaining insight into their understanding regarding natural phenomena. Representative examples of this fact may be found along the pathway of astronomical science, in its pre-photographic times (Vaquero and Vázquez 2009). Ethnoastronomic and archaeoastronomic studies reveal that the representation of the sun, along with other heavenly bodies, has accompanied human graphical expression from even the prehistoric times (Sarhaddi 2013) so that solar depictions are “the most favored and easiest to be recognized on archaeological artifacts” (Pásztor 2015)

Methods

Results

Conclusion