The Gang Age: The Dawning Realism Stage

1.5 The Gang Age (The Dawning Realism Stage):

Art of the gang age marks the change between art as completely symbolic to art as a creative outlet. Learners at this stage will focus on developing an ability to do things very well in art and may often get frustrated throughout the process. Artists might begin to represent their subjects from many viewpoints and often many baselines are shown. Colour is true to life in drawings from this stage, but elements of fantasy and illusion may be included in the form of world-making.

Learners have a greater knowledge of their physical surroundings. Mostly during this stage young artists will make certain parts of a piece very detailed and resolve the remaining space with shorthanded symbols. Events are described rather than drawn realistically. Also, artists at this stage begin to change the size of objects depending
This is a period of self-acknowledgement to the point of being very self-critical. The attempts at realism need to be looked at from the learner's point of view. Realism is not meant to be real in the photographic sense rather than an experience with a particular object. This stage is the first time that the learner becomes aware of a lack of ability to show objects the way they appear in the surrounding environment. The human is shown as girl, boy, woman, man clearly defined with a feeling for details often resulting in a "stiffness" of representation. The way they see things is another feature of this stage. There is knowledge of the space between the base line and sky line. Overlapping of objects, types of point of the way things are seen and use of small to large objects are obvious at this stage. Objects no longer stand on a base line. Three-dimensional effects are accomplished along with shading and use of skillful colour combinations. Because of knowledge of the lack of ability, drawings often appear less unplanned than in previous stages. (Lowenfeld, V,