Brush and colours

By the counsellor Rajaa Shamiya

 

"The harmony of the painting, the brush and the colours is like my own harmony with drawing. I find myself when I draw, and my brush expresses what is inside me."

Drawing is one of the activities that occupies an important place in the child's world and in dealing with him at one and the same time, since it is where the child finds himself. When he draws and shows us the picture he has traced with his colours, it carries on the unconscious level the ability to master the world and its struggles, and this ability reassures him against feelings of helplessness before the outside world and against helplessness before his own desires and the possibility of their being frustrated.

Through drawing the child feels he is in a world where nothing is impossible, away from the restrictions and prohibitions his family and society impose on him. Here he feels he is in control of all the external factors surrounding him.

Drawing is of great importance to the child in his existential experience, since it reflects an aspect of the existential experience the child lives: his dreams, his desires, his fears, his interests and his position, through the subjects he chooses in his drawing. In this way it tells us about his emotional relationships with the world around him, or about the fear that marks his bonds with people and things, and it is for him a means of presenting himself to others.

The second aspect of its importance is the projective function of drawing, since drawing goes beyond expression to an attempt to resolve the child's problem with the world and with himself. Through the projective function of drawing he is able to free himself from the weight of internal or emotional predicaments and to give an answer to them by fixing them in external reality, and this projective function is helped by the blending of reality with imagination.

Drawing is one of the activities that spontaneously draws the child towards expressing himself, and in many cases it forms a basic entry point for establishing a relationship with him.