Drawings of People by Australian Aboriginal Children: the Intermixing of Cultural Styles

The general developmental changes observed in human figure drawings of modernday young children in western societies are reviewed in this paper. Differences in style over historical time and in other societies throw doubt on the notion of a fixed and universal pattern of development. Even so, children’s drawings seem to become more westernised as schooling has spread to more and more remote, rural societies. In Australia, however, the Warlpiri Aboriginal people have continued to use their traditional pictorial symbols in their paintings, sand drawings and school books; Warlpiri school-children use and develop both the indigenous and the westernised styles of drawing.