Borrowing and Artistic Behavior: A Case-Study of the Development of Bruce's Spontaneous Drawings from Six to Sixteen

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a longitudinal, participant-observation study of one boy's spontaneous drawings from pre-adolescence to adolescence. Themes related to adolescent developmental psychology emerge in the drawings. Feeling, humor, divergent thinking, and love of incongruity characterize the drawings and indicate artistic behavior. Drawing from memory and borrowing image, style, or technique were distinguished from drawing from pictures and replication. The former strategies provide technique, yet permit free ideation which the latter restricts. While artistic behavior in drawing may include borrowing, it also involves idiosyncratic expression, imagination, restructuring, and metaphorical thinking.