Montessori Elementary Materials - English Restoration --- ## Chapter 17 - Drawing ## PART V **DRAWING** --- \[300\]\ \[301\] ## I **LINEAR GEOMETRIC DESIGN DECORATION** I already have mentioned the fact that the material of the geometric insets may be applied also to design. It is through design that the child may be led to ponder on the geometric figures which he has handled, taken out, combined in numerous ways, and replaced. In doing this he completes an exercise necessitating much use of the reasoning faculties. Indeed, he reproduces all of the figures by linear design, learning to handle many instruments—the centimeter ruler, the double decimeter, the square, the protractor, the compass, and the steel pen used for line ruling. For this work we have included in the geometric material a large portfolio where, together with the pages reproducing the figures, there are also some illustrative sheets with brief explanations of the figures and containing the relative nomenclature. Aside from copying designs the child may copy also the explanatory notes and thus reproduce the whole geometry portfolio. These explanatory notes are very simple. Here, for example, is the one which refers to the square: "Square: The side or base is divided into 10 cm. All the other sides are equal, hence each measures 10 cm. The square has four equal sides and four equal angles which are always right angles. The number 4 and the identity of the sides and angles are the distinguishing characteristics of the square." The children measure paper and construct the figure\[302\] with attention and application that are truly remarkable. They love to handle the compasses and are very proud of possessing a pair. One child asked her mother for a Christmas gift of "one *last* doll and a box of compasses," as if she were ending one epoch of her life and beginning another. One little boy begged his mother to let him accompany her when she went to buy the compass for him. When they were in the store the salesman was surprised to find that so young a child was to use the compass and gave them a box of the simplest kind. "Not those," protested the little fellow; "I want an engineer's compass;" and he picked out one of the most complicated ones. This was the very reason why he was so anxious to go with his mother. As the children draw, they learn many particulars concerning the geometric figures: the sides, angles, bases, centers, median lines, radii, diameters, sectors, segments, diagonals, hypotenuses, circumferences, perimeters, etc. They do not, however, learn all this as so much dry information nor do they limit themselves to reproducing the designs in the geometry portfolio. Each child adds to his own portfolio other designs which he chooses and sometimes originates. The designs reproduced in the portfolio are drawn on plain white drawing paper with China inks, but the children's special designs are drawn on colored paper with different colored inks and with gildings (silver, gold). The children reproduce the geometric figures and then they fill them in with decorations made either with pen or water-colors. These decorations serve especially to emphasize, in a geometric analysis, the various parts of the figure, such as center, angles, circumference, medians, diagonals, etc. \[303\] The decorated motif is selected or else invented by the child himself. He is allowed the same freedom of choice in his backgrounds as he enjoys for his inks or water-colors. The observation of nature (flowers and their different parts—pollen, leaves, a section of some part observed under the microscope, plant seeds, shells, etc.) serves to nourish the child's æsthetic imagination. The children also have access to artistic designs, collections of photographs reproducing the great masterpieces, and Haeckel's famous work, *Nature's Artistic Forms*, all of which equipment is so interesting and delightful to a child. The children work many, many hours on drawing. This is the time we seize for reading to them (see above p. 197) and almost all their history is learned during this quiet period of copy and simple decoration which is so conducive to concentration of thought. Copying some design, or drawing a decoration which has been directly inspired by something seen; the choice of colors to fill in a geometric figure or to bring out, by small and simple designs, the center or side of the figure; the mechanical act of mixing a color, of dissolving the gildings, or of choosing one kind of ink from a series of different colors; sharpening a pencil, or getting one's paper in the proper position; determining through tentative means the required extension of the compass—all this is a complex operation requiring patience and exactitude. But it does not require great intellectual concentration. It is, therefore, a work of application rather than of inspiration; and the observation of each detail, in order to reproduce it exactly, clarifies and rests the mind instead of rousing it to the intense activity demanded by the labor of association and creation. The\[304\] child is busy with his hands rather than with his mind; but yet his mind is sufficiently stimulated by this work as not easily to wander away into the world of dreams. These are quiet hours of work in which the children use only a part of their energies, while the other part is reaching out after something else; just as a family sits quietly by the fireside in long winter evenings engaged in light manual labors requiring little intelligence, watching the flames with a sense of enjoyment, willing to pass in this way many peaceful hours, yet feeling that a certain side of their needs is not satisfied. This is the time chosen for story telling or for light reading. Similarly this is the best time for our little children to listen to reading of all kinds. During these hours they listened to the reading of books like *The Betrothed* (of Manzoni), psychological books like Itard's *Education of the Savage of Aveyron*, or historical narratives. The children took a deep interest in the reading. Each child may be occupied with his own design as well as with the facts which he is hearing described. It seems as though the one occupation furnishes the energy necessary for perfection in the other. The mechanical attention which the child gives to his design frees his mind from idle dreaming and renders it more capable of completely absorbing the reading that is going on; and the pleasure gained from the reading which, little by little, penetrates his whole being seems to give new energy to both hand and eye. His lines become most exact and the colors more delicate. When the reading has reached some point of climax we hear remarks, exclamations, applause or discussions, which animate and lighten the work without interrupting it. But there are times when, with one accord, our children\[305\] abandon their drawing so as to act out some humorous selection or to represent an historical fact which has touched them deeply; or, indeed, as happened during the reading of the *Savage of Aveyron*, their hands remained almost unconsciously raised in the intensity of their emotion, while on their faces was an expression of ecstasy, as if they were witnessing wonderful unheard-of things. Their actions seemed to interpret the well-known sentiment: "Never have I seen woman like unto this."   Artistic Composition with the Insets: Our geometric insets, which are all definitely related to one another in dimensions and include a series of figures which can be contained one within the other, lend themselves to very beautiful combinations. With these the children make real creations and often follow out their artistic ideas for days and even weeks. By moving the small pieces or by combining them in different ways on the white background, these very insets produce various decorations. The ease with which the child may form designs by arranging the little pieces of iron on a sheet of paper and then outlining them, and the harmony which is thus so easily obtained, affords endless delight. Really wonderful pieces of work are often produced in this way. During these periods of creative design, as indeed during the periods of drawing from life, the child is deeply and wholly concentrated. His entire intellect is at work and no kind of instructive reading would be at all fitting while he is engaged in drawing or designing of this nature. With the insets, as we have said, we have reproduced some of the classic decorations so greatly admired in the\[306\] Italian masterpieces; for instance, those of Giotto in Florentine Art. When the children try with the insets to reproduce these classic decorations from photographs they are led to make most minute observations, which may be considered a real study of art. They judge the relative proportions of the various figures in such a way that their eye learns to appreciate the harmony of the work. And thus, even in childhood, a fine æsthetic enjoyment begins to engage their minds on the higher and more noble planes. --- \[307\] ## II **FREE-HAND DRAWING—STUDIES FROM LIFE** All the preceding exercises are "formative" for the art of drawing. They develop in the child the manual ability to execute a geometric design and prepare his eye to appreciate the harmony of proportions between geometric figures. The countless observations of drawings, the habit of minute examination of natural objects, constitute so many preparatory drills. We can, however, say that the whole method, educating the eye and the hand at the same time and training the child to observe and execute drawings with intense application, prepares the mechanical means for design, while the mind, left free to take its flight and to create, is ready to produce. It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes. The ability *to see reality* in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one's own hand—that is what is necessary. Inspiration is an individual thing, and when a child possesses these formative elements he can give expression to all he happens to have. There can be no "graduated exercises in drawing" leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit. That\[308\] is our reason for not teaching drawing directly to the child. We prepare him indirectly, leaving him free to the mysterious and divine labor of reproducing things according to his own feelings. Thus drawing comes to satisfy a need for expression, as does language; and almost every idea may seek expression in drawing. The effort to perfect such expression is very similar to that which the child makes when he is spurred on to perfect his language in order to see his thoughts translated into reality. This effort is spontaneous; and the real drawing teacher is in the inner life, which of itself develops, attains refinement, and seeks irresistibly to be born into external existence in some empirical form. Even the smallest children try spontaneously to draw outlines of the objects which they see; but the hideous drawings which are exhibited in the common schools, as "free drawings" "characteristic" of childhood, are not found among our children. These horrible daubs so carefully collected, observed, and catalogued by modern psychologists as "documents of the infant mind" are nothing but monstrous expressions of intellectual lawlessness; they show only that the eye of their child is uneducated, the hand inert, the mind insensible alike to the beautiful and to the ugly, blind to the true as well as to the false. Like most documents collected by psychologists who study the children of our schools, they reveal not the soul but the errors of the soul; and these drawings, with their monstrous deformities, show simply what the uneducated human being is like. Such things are not "free drawings" by children. *Free drawings* are possible only when we have a *free child* who has been left free to grow and perfect himself in the assimilation of his surroundings and in mechanical\[309\] reproduction; and who when left free to create and express himself actually does create and express himself. The sensory and manual preparation for drawing is nothing more than an alphabet; but without it the child is an illiterate and cannot express himself. And just as it is impossible to study the writing of people who cannot write, so there can be no psychological study of the drawings of children who have been abandoned to spiritual and muscular chaos. All psychic expressions acquire value when the inner personality has acquired value by the development of its formative processes. Until this fundamental principle has become an absolute acquisition we can have no idea of the psychology of a child as regards his creative powers. Thus, unless we know how a child should develop in order to unfold his natural energies, we shall not know how drawing as a natural expression is developed. The universal development of the wondrous language of the hand will come not from a "school of design" but from a "school of the new man" which will cause this language to spring forth spontaneously like water from an inexhaustible spring. To confer the gift of drawing we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and in this task the whole life must cooperate. In this sense life itself is the only preparation for drawing. Once we have lived, the inner spark of vision does the rest.  > **Designs formed by the use of the geometry squares, circles, and equilateral triangle, modified by free-hand drawing. In the design on the right the "flower" within the cross is made with compasses: the decorative detail in the arms of the cross and the circle in the center are free-hand. The design on the left is similar to a decoration in the Cathedral at Florence, in the windows round the apse.** Leave to man then this sublime gesture which transfers to the canvas the marks of creative divinity. Leave it free to develop from the very time when the tiny child takes a piece of chalk and reproduces a simple outline on the blackboard, when he sees a leaf and makes his first reproduction of it on the white page. Such a child is in\[310\]\ \[311\]\ \[312\] search of every possible means of expression, because no one language is rich enough to give expression to the gushing life within him. He speaks, he writes, he draws, he sings like a nightingale warbling in the springtime.   Let us consider, then, the "elements" which our children have acquired in their development with reference to drawing: they are observers of reality, knowing how to distinguish the *forms* and *colors* they see there.  > **Decorations formed by the use of the geometry insets. That on the right is a copy of the design by Giotto shown below the picture of the Madonna in the Upper Church of St. Francis d'Assisi (Umbria).**  > **Making decorative designs with the aid of geometric insets. (*The Washington Montessori School, Washington, D. C.*)** Children are peculiarly sensitive in their appreciation of color. This sensibility began to grow in the sensory exercises in the early years. Their hands have been trained to the most delicate movements and the children have been masters of them since the days of the "Children's House." When they begin to draw outlines they copy the most diverse objects—not only flowers but everything which interests them: vases, columns and even landscapes. Their attempts are spontaneous; and they draw both on the blackboard and on paper. As regards colors, it should be recalled that while still in the "Children's House" the children learned to prepare the different shades, mixing them themselves and making the various blends. This always held their eager interest. Later the care with which they seek to get shades corresponding exactly to natural colorings is something truly remarkable.[\[8\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42869/pg42869-images.html#Footnote_8_8) Over and over again the children try to mix the most diverse colors, diluting or saturating them until they have succeeded in reproducing the desired shade. It is surprising also to see how often their eye succeeds in appreciating the finest differences of color and in reproducing them with striking accuracy.  **Water-color paintings from nature, showing spontaneous expression resulting from work in natural science.** The study of natural science proved to be a great help in drawing. Once I tried to show some children how a flower should be dissected, and for this purpose I provided all the necessary instruments: the botanist's needle, pincers, thin glass plates, etc., just as is done at the university for the experiments in natural science. My only aim was to see whether the preparations which university students make for botanical anatomy were in any way adaptable to the needs of little children. Even at the time when I studied in the botanical laboratory at the university I felt that these exercises in the preparation of material might be put to such use. Students know how difficult it is to prepare a stem, a stamen, an epithelium, for dissection, and how only with difficulty the hand, accustomed for years exclusively to writing, adapts itself to this delicate work. Seeing how skilful our children were with their little hands I decided to give them a complete scientific outfit and to test by experiment whether the child mind and the characteristic manual dexterity shown by children were not more adapted to such labors than the mind and hand of a nineteen-year-old student.  My suspicion proved correct. The children with the keenest interest dissected a section of the violet with remarkable accuracy, and they quickly learned to use all the instruments. But my greatest surprise was to find that they did not despise or throw away the dissected parts, as we older students used to do. With great care they placed them all in attractive order on a piece of white paper, as if they had in mind some secret purpose. Then with great joy they began to draw them; and they were accurate, skilled, tireless, and patient, as they are in\[313\]\ \[314\] everything else. They began to mix and dilute their colors to obtain the correct shades. They worked up to the last minute of the school session, finishing off their designs in watercolor: the stem and leaves green, the individual petals violet, the stamens—all in a row—yellow, and the dissected pistil light green. The following day a little girl brought me a charmingly vivacious written composition, in which she told of her enthusiasm over\[315\] the new work, describing even the less noticeable details of the little violet. These two expressions—drawing and composition—were the spontaneous manifestations of their happy entrance into the realms of science. Encouraged by this great success, I took some simple microscopes to school. The children began to observe the pollen and even some of the membrane coverings of the flower. By themselves they made some splendid cross-sections of the stems, which they studied most attentively. They "drew everything they saw." Drawing seemed to be the natural complement of their observation work. In this way the children learned to draw and paint *without a drawing teacher*. They produced works which, in geometric designs as well as in studies from life, were considered far above the average drawings of children. --- ### FOOTNOTE: [\[8\]](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42869/pg42869-images.html#FNanchor_8_8) We give to the children first only tubes containing the three fundamental colors, red, yellow, and blue; and with these they produce a large number of shades.