Owen’s masterpieces

 We had to observe a child drawing pictures so I chose my boyfiend’s nephew Owen who is 4 years old. I observed him drawing a picture of himself and then a picture of whatever he wanted. WOW! was this interesting. Own had such an imagination with his second drawing. He didn’t seem very thrilled to draw himself but he did it nonetheless. But when I told him he could draw whatever he wanted for his second drawing, weill he went to town! I think when he had the freedom to draw what he wanted, he enjoyed it more. He was definitely more engaged and enthused with the second one. Now what looks like scribbles to you and me is actually an elaborate, detailed picture. His picture represents the story he was telling  me as he was drawing it. It was the sea melting, plants in the sea melting, fish melting, dolphins eating fish and melting, octopus eating fish and seaweed and melting. His story kept on building on itself and with every build he drew along with it. If a fish ate seaweed he would draw the fish and then draw a line to the seaweed to show that it was eating the seaweed. The swirl spots on the page are actually seaweed melting, but the lines are the seaweed that still grew and did not melt. He would exclaim, “look what’s happening” and then tell me or “do you know what’s coming?” He kept me in dialogue with him the whole time. It was truly incredible and it blew me away. I wonder if all kids this age do this?

A couple of days later I was telling his grandmother about our art session and I was describing his drawing when she exclaimed why he was drawing melting.  A week earler when she was babysitting him and his brother they were in the hot tub, when we had all that snow. They were melting the snow into the hot tub pretending that they were ice burgs melting in the ocean because of global warming! I thought it was amazing that he used his ‘background knowledge’ to create a representation of what he learned. He even extended his learning to include the fish, plant life and other marine life. He truly amazed me. It was a great experience and I don’t think I will ever forget it.

This is Owen’s drawing of himself. I was surprised he chose pink (my own gender socialization assumptions coming out) but you can see the head, neck and body, so he knows the form of the body.

Here is Owen’s melting ocean  scene. See all the swirls, or should I say melting seaweed and fish?!