Tadpoling

Boo has been tadpoling a whole lot recently. No, not fishing for nascent froggies, but rendering what is known as a 'tadpole' in whatever drawing media she can get hold of. Tadpole drawings are the first emergent representations of figures seen in childrens' drawings and the interesting thing is that all children everywhere go through the same representational stages towards figuration. They require no tuition, it is simply a natural development inherent to the growing awareness of self in the small child. It felt like I was waiting forever for Boo's first tadpole, but I recorded back in October 2010 when she was 3... and here it is..

I thought that once the tadpole emerged there would be no looking back but she was back to scribbling and other mark-making much of the time. However, ground work was being laid, figures were sometimes just vertical lines, there was repeated use of circles, parallel lines, crosses, 'ladder' shapes, wee small circles moving towards their combination as the tadpole.

 It is almost as if the tadpole emerges as a true sense of self emerges, and I don't believe these expressions can truly be called 'art' in the formal sense, they are almost an assertion of the 'I' of the child. Boo was late to use 'I' in reference to herself, so it's perhaps not surprising that her tadpoles took a while in coming. But here they are now, and here they will stay, gradually becoming more detailed as fingers emerge, the tadpoles become clothed, they start to stand on drawn surfaces, and some of the them are beginning to perform actions (mostly dancing!) I have to say I love the age of the tadpole and look forward to when Boo is ready for a bit of observational drawing.