The young child learning to draw...

“The young child learning to draw has long interested both psychologists and artists. When he first draws a man or a truck or a table, I suggest, he depicts the invariants that he has learned to notice. He does not draw in patchwork perspective, for he never had the experience of a patchwork. He may not yet draw in edge perspective because he has not noticed it. Hence, he may draw a table with a rectangular top and four legs at the corners because those are the invariant features of the table he has noticed. This is a better explanation than saying he draws what he knows about the table, his concept, instead of what he sees of the table, his sensation. The fatal flaw of the latter explanation is that it ought to be the other way around. The child should begin by drawing sensations and progress to drawing concepts.” —James J. Gibson