A child draws in black: what does it mean

When a kid picks up pencils or a brush and paints, it always causes affection and delight in the parents. Many moms and dads keep the first "kalyak-malyak" with anxiety and tenderness all their lives. But the drawings of the crumbs often raise a lot of questions from relatives who have heard at least something about psychological "color" testing. Especially often worried parents ask themselves why the baby paints the world in black and what does this mean?

Color selection

The color test, developed by Dr. Max Luscher, is a method for diagnosing the psychophysical state of a person. It is based on color preference. By what color the subject chooses as a loved one, it is possible to determine the level of his stress resistance, mental state at this moment in life, activity, the ability to establish contacts and even preferences in vocational guidance. Luscher argued that the choice of color is our "unconscious", and his diagnostic method is "deep", that is, coming from the subconscious, and therefore the most accurate.

Features of color perception in children

Max Luscher is undoubtedly an outstanding psychologist, and the test he invented today is one of the most important for professional testing of military personnel, police officers, etc. But is it applicable to children? How reliable will the results be if a child's drawing is analyzed using the method of Dr. Luscher?

Let's start with the fact that children see the world a little differently. A newborn does not distinguish colors at all, perceives only contrasting combinations - black - white, for example. From 6 weeks to 2 months old, the baby begins to see the outlines of objects and its first color is red. Gradually, he becomes able to perceive other bright colors. By the age of 3, the baby perfectly distinguishes blue, green, yellow, at 3.5 years old - black, gray, brown.

But neither at 1 year, nor at 2, nor at 3 does your little one choose paint on purpose. In other words, the child does not care what color to paint a house, a car or a portrait of his mother, as long as the paint is contrasting with the sheet of paper. What color is best seen on white? Right! The black!

The baby begins to change his attitude to the choice of color by the age of 4. Then he himself tends to paint in red, blue, green and yellow.

Therefore, painting with black paint for a certain time should not alarm parents and cause them fear. And Luscher's test is practically inapplicable to the drawings of babies. Psychologists recommend starting color testing by age 8. After all, the final "color vision" of the world around a child is formed at about 8-10 years old.

Causes

Even the most brilliant psychologist will not undertake to diagnose any problems of a psychological or even worse psychiatric nature in a child just from a drawing. All experts know that to make a more or less intelligible picture is possible only by combining several methods: Luscher's test and a conversation-description, for example. It is not enough for one child's drawing with black paint, he must tell what and why he depicted.

What are the reasons for a healthy child to paint pictures in black?

Crisis 3 years. At this age, babies begin to show incredible stubbornness, denial and even negativism. If the baby noticed earlier that his work with black paint does not delight his mother, puzzles or even frightens her, he may decide for himself that his mother does not like this color. Then he will deliberately paint the picture in black.
Incipient illness or inclement weather. Children from 1 to 5 years old have a very developed sensory sphere. But not everything can be expressed by the baby with words, as adults do. If a child feels that he is starting to get sick, he is unwell, he, not yet really understanding what is happening, can begin to express his health in the drawing. And if there is dirt, slush outside the window, and gray, black, brown colors prevail, then he can simply depict everything as it is - dirty, black, gloomy. Neither in the case of an incipient illness, nor in the case of a reaction to the weather, it is impossible to talk about disorders of the psychoemotional sphere in a child if he draws in mourning tones.

Developed fantasy... Often children, painting, spiritualize the picture. They sincerely believe that the pictured house is the real one, or something can be stored in a painted box. If the kid paints the drawing with black paint, he is probably trying to hide something in the house or box. To understand this, it is enough to ask him what is hidden behind the blackness? For a child, it is not the color that matters, but the informative content of his picture.
Dark clothes. Babies for whom mothers buy practical dark clothes that get less dirty most often depict the world in black in their drawings. Why it happens? They just love to paint in black, because they are used to associating themselves with the dark, and drawing for a crumb is a part of themselves. By the way, psychologists say that children, whose wardrobe is dominated by a dark range, get sick more often than their brightly dressed peers. There is only one recommendation here - change the color of your child's clothes, and the general tone of his artistic delights will definitely become brighter.

When to start sounding the alarm?

If, in addition to drawings with black paint, the child demonstrates other odd behavior. For example, a son or daughter draws "blackness", and at the same time has almost no contact with peers, adults (except for parents), suffers from nightmares, shows aggression towards animals and people.
If your child is already 10 years old, and he continues to paint with black paint, this may indicate violations of the psychological plan.
If aggressive plots prevail in the child's drawings - war, people killed, faces crossed out in black, a repetitive combination of black and red.
If the child has always painted vivid pictures, and after some certain unpleasant situations in life, he began to use only black in his work, it may be a manifestation of post-stress syndrome.

Psychologist's opinion

Each child's drawing, like its author, is unique and inimitable. It is impossible to "comb" all children with the same brush. Adults should understand that there are no good and bad flowers in the world. These are just colors. A combination of factors matters. To understand why a kid draws this or that, it is important to know in what mood he picked up the pencils, what he thinks about at the moment of drawing, how he feels.

Quite often “smart” and “educated” psychologists with “numerous recommendations” try to carry out color tests in kindergartens. If I had my way, I would have prohibited such experiments at the legislative level. Because, everyone who has studied developmental psychology at the university knows like twice two that it is uninformative to test preschoolers with the same Luscher method. And even more so to draw some negative conclusions based on the black and white creativity of a preschooler!

For a video consultation with a psychologist on why the drawing is drawn in black, see below:

The only acceptable diagnosis by drawing has a right to exist in preparation for school. A school psychologist might ask a six-year-old to draw a picture of his family, for example, or himself. And the conclusion will be strictly limited - whether the baby can draw proportionally, and whether his hand is well developed for subsequent writing. And no "draws in black - that means a maniac!"

If a child draws his mother in black, himself, the cat Vaska and the neighbor Aunt Katya and at the same time remains a cheerful and positive child, loves the mother and the cat, is not afraid of the neighbor, there is nothing wrong, as we have already found out. He just likes it better. But if the crumbs have a conflict with one of the family members, and he begins to portray this person as black, you should seek advice from a child psychologist or art therapist.

How to find out what the child meant by creating a black picture? It's very simple. Ask him in detail about the plot of the drawing. Find out who, why and why are depicted on it. Ask leading questions so that the child can formulate thoughts more specifically. And if the child manages to tell, then you should not worry about the unconscious choice of black paint.

However, if the baby began to paint in black after some stress, do not rush to write him down as a depressed, suffering person. Drawing for a child is a way to release internal energy. It is possible that after a few days the gamma will change to a brighter one. If the "dark period" in creativity has dragged on, and there are physical signs of trouble for the baby, consult with specialists. With the help of additional techniques they will be able to find out what happened and how to help the young artist.