Kids are terrible artists. They have no experience, no technique, no understanding of perspective or scale. When it comes to seeing something and rendering it accurately or recognizably on a piece of paper their abilities are pathetically inadequate to the task.

However, if you take those drawings as a starting point, then get an actual artist with skills and abilities to render them realistically, you end up with art that is freaky as fuck. That's what Tom Curtis did in a series of artworks he created based on grotesque renderings scrawled by children.

Some people would think "What sort of developmental disability does a child have when they think that this is what an elephant looks like?" But this is not the result of fetal alcohol syndrome, this is the best that the child could do.

How disappointing it must be to have a child who, when asked to draw a picture of a panda, can't accurately count the number of arms and legs that the panda has, or tell what part of the body those arms and legs are attached to. How do you explain this lack of visual awareness to your family and friends? You have to raise this kid until they're 18 at least. If they're this inadequate when they're four, think what a disappointment they're going to be to you when they grow up.

Children's leg-counting abilities don't get any better when attempting to draw a well-known creature like a turtle. They're apt to attach the poor creature's head to its front leg, showing a complete lack of understanding of how turtle bodies work. If an actual turtle looked like that a compassionate person would smash it with a rock to put the turtle out of it's misery.

Absolutely horrifying.

Check it out yourself

iambic@pigdog.org