Young Children's Painting of the Sky and the Ground

Abstract

Young children often leave a gap between the sky and the horizon in their drawings and paintings. Study 1 examined the landscape paintings of a group of 45 7-10-year-old children and found the children leaving an air gap to be significantly younger than those painting the sky to the horizon. In addition the omission of the air gap was associated with the use of devices to represent three-dimensional space in two dimensions. In Study 2 a group of 7-8-year old chldren painted landscapes on two occasions separated by 7-7.5 months. This study suggested that there are a series of stages between leaving a gap and painting the sky to meet the horizon. It is concluded that painting the sky to meet the horizon may be one of several strategies for representing three-dimensional space, which develops over the age range studied.