How Drawing Nurtures Children's Brains and Hearts — Evidence from Academic Research

Why Drawing Is a Subject of Serious Research

A child gripping a crayon, filling a sheet of paper with bold, sweeping lines — it is one of the most familiar scenes of childhood. Yet decades of academic research have revealed that this simple act of drawing supports multiple dimensions of a child's development in profound ways.

In this article, we draw on published studies and research findings from around the world to explore how drawing influences children's cognitive, emotional, motor, and social development — and why preserving those artworks matters more than you might think.

Cognitive Development and Drawing — Lines and Colors That Build the Brain

Drawing as a Window into Cognitive Growth

Developmental psychologist Viktor Lowenfeld, in his landmark work Creative and Mental Growth (first published in 1947; 8th edition with Brittain in 1987), systematically demonstrated that children's drawings are closely linked to cognitive development. Lowenfeld argued that children's pictures are far more than evidence of improving technique — they reflect the growth of thinking ability, spatial awareness, and the capacity for abstraction.

What One Million Drawings Reveal

American psychologist Rhoda Kellogg collected and analyzed over one million drawings from children around the world, publishing her findings in Analyzing Children's Art (1969). Her most striking discovery was that regardless of culture or nationality, children begin drawing with the same 20 basic scribble patterns and gradually evolve them into shapes such as mandalas and sun figures. This suggests that drawing is not a culturally learned behavior but part of a developmental process hard-wired into the human brain.

Neuroscience Confirms the Effects of Art-Making

In 2014, Bolwerk and colleagues conducted a study in Germany using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to examine how visual art production affects the brain. Published in PLOS ONE, the study found that participants who engaged in hands-on art-making over a 10-week period showed significantly strengthened connectivity between networks in the brain. Although this study focused on older adults, its findings suggest that art-making may enhance stress resilience and cognitive flexibility.

The Link Between Drawing and Academic Performance

A 2023 study by Egana-delSol, published in npj Science of Learning (a Nature-affiliated journal), used a quasi-experimental design to examine the impact of arts programs on high school students' academic performance. The results showed that students who participated in at least two semesters of arts workshops experienced significant improvement in language scores, along with measurable gains in mathematics. While this study focused on high school students, it provides supporting evidence that engaging in the arts from an early age may help build the cognitive foundations for academic success.

Emotional Development and Drawing — A Means of Expressing the Heart

An Outlet for Feelings Words Cannot Capture

Children — especially young children — often struggle to express their emotions in words. Cathy Malchiodi, a leading figure in art therapy, wrote in Understanding Children's Drawings (1998) that drawing serves as a vital non-verbal channel for emotional expression. Joy, anxiety, anger, sadness — children naturally project these feelings into their pictures, using the creative process to organize and make sense of their inner world.

Experimental Evidence for Mood Regulation Through Drawing

Psychologists Drake and Winner at Boston College (2012) experimentally tested whether drawing can improve a sad mood. In their study, published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, participants who recalled a sad event and then drew something unrelated to it (distraction drawing) showed significantly greater mood recovery than those who drew the sad event itself (venting drawing). In other words, drawing can serve as a tool for emotion regulation in children by helping them redirect their attention.

Motor Skill Development — Big Growth from Small Hands

Scribbling as a Motor Learning Process

The seemingly chaotic scribbles of a toddler carry real significance for motor development. Greer and Lockman (1998), in a study published in Child Development, demonstrated that children's scribble patterns change systematically as they develop. What begins as large, sweeping motions driven by the shoulder gradually transitions to finer control involving the wrist and fingertips.

Drawing as a Foundation for Writing

The act of gripping a crayon or pencil lays the groundwork for the fine motor skills needed for handwriting. The developmental progression of pencil grip (from a palmar grasp to a tripod grip), hand-eye coordination, and the ability to place lines precisely where intended on paper — all of these are abilities naturally strengthened through daily drawing. Educators widely observe that children with rich pre-school drawing experience tend to transition to writing more smoothly.

Social and Communication Skills

Drawing as a Catalyst for Dialogue

British researcher Kathy Ring (2006) observed children's drawing activities in both home and school settings, revealing that drawing is not merely a solitary activity but a social act that takes on meaning within relationships with others. Children talk with friends while drawing, share their pictures, and co-create stories.

Strengthening the Parent-Child Bond Through Shared Experience

"What did you draw?" "Who is this person?" — Conversations sparked by a child's artwork are a form of joint attention, a developmentally important type of communication. By explaining their drawings, children expand their vocabulary and expressive abilities, while parents gain a precious window into their child's inner world.

The Success Experiences Drawing Provides — Self-Efficacy and Its Lifelong Impact

How "I Did It!" Builds Self-Efficacy

Psychologist Albert Bandura, in his self-efficacy theory (1977, 1997), demonstrated that self-efficacy — the belief that "I can do this" — has a decisive influence on behavior and achievement. Among the four sources of self-efficacy Bandura identified, the most powerful is mastery experience — the actual experience of successfully accomplishing something.

Drawing is a rare activity that allows children to accumulate mastery experiences on a daily basis. Drawing a line, closing a circle, depicting a face — each small "I did it!" moment builds self-efficacy and lays the foundation for the motivation and perseverance to take on new challenges.

The Only Activity Where Growth Is Visible to the Eye

What sets drawing apart from other forms of play is that the process of growth is preserved as tangible works. The scribbles of a one-year-old, the tadpole figures of a three-year-old, the narrative-rich pictures of a five-year-old — by placing past and present drawings side by side, children can visually experience that "I've gotten better" and "Look how much I've changed."

This "visualization of growth" is deeply connected to what Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck (2006) calls the growth mindset. Numerous studies have shown that children who believe their abilities can be developed through effort are more resilient in the face of difficulty and achieve higher outcomes in both academic and social settings. When past artworks are preserved, children gain experiential proof that effort leads to growth.

Childhood Creativity Predicts Future Success

Root-Bernstein and colleagues at Michigan State University (2008) published a study in the Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology surveying Nobel Prize-winning scientists and members of the National Academy of Sciences. They found that distinguished scientists were significantly more likely than average scientists to have engaged in artistic activities such as drawing and crafting from childhood through adolescence. It is believed that the divergent thinking, pattern recognition, and flexible problem-solving skills cultivated through creative artistic activities form the foundation for later scientific success.

A 50-Year Longitudinal Study Proves the Predictive Power of Creativity

E. Paul Torrance, a pioneer in creativity research, began testing the creativity of elementary school students in 1958 and followed them for 50 years. The final report by Runco and colleagues (2010) confirmed that creative potential measured in childhood was significantly related to personal creative achievement in adulthood. Furthermore, a meta-analysis by Gajda, Karwowski, and Beghetto (2017), integrating 120 studies with approximately 53,000 participants, statistically confirmed that children with higher creativity tend to perform better academically, with a particularly strong link to verbal creativity.

Flow — Accelerating Growth Through Deep Engagement

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) demonstrated that "flow" — a state of optimal experience in which one is fully immersed in an activity, losing track of time — plays an important role in human growth and well-being. Drawing is a quintessential activity for children to enter a flow state, combining an appropriate level of challenge with immediate feedback (what you draw is instantly visible). Repeated flow experiences strengthen concentration, intrinsic motivation, and the sense of fulfillment derived from the activity itself.

The Scientific Case for Preserving Children's Art

Art as Family Narrative

Developmental psychologist Robyn Fivush (2008) demonstrated in Memory Studies that family narratives — stories shared within a family — play an important role in shaping a child's identity. A child's drawings can become a treasured element of these family stories. "You drew this when you were three." "You made this picture at grandma's house." — By sharing the episodes connected to each artwork, families build shared memories and enrich the child's sense of self.

Drawing and Self-Esteem — A Large-Scale Study of 6,209 Children

Mak and Fancourt (2019) studied the relationship between arts engagement and self-esteem among 6,209 children from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study. A key finding of their research, published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, was that children who engaged in visual arts activities such as drawing and coloring had higher self-esteem at age 11. Notably, teacher assessments of ability had no effect on the outcome — it was the act of engaging in the activity itself, regardless of artistic "skill," that produced the benefit.

Simply Displaying Artwork Boosts Self-Esteem — Evidence from Japan

The Homesha (Photo Praise) Project in Japan (2018), led by education commentator Chikara Oyano, Professor Kikunori Shinohara (Suwa University of Science, formerly Tokyo University of Science, Suwa), and Professor Kyoko Iwatate (Tokyo Gakugei University), studied 32 families over three weeks to examine the effects of displaying children's photos and artwork in the home. The results showed that children's "satisfaction with themselves" rose from 65% to 90%. Brain activity measured with NIRS (near-infrared spectroscopy) also confirmed activation of the right prefrontal cortex when children viewed their own photos and artwork. This is a valuable Japanese study demonstrating that the everyday act of displaying a child's drawings can boost self-esteem.

The Message: "What You Create Matters"

Preserving, displaying, and cherishing a child's artwork sends a powerful message that the child's self-expression is valued and respected. In the framework of Self-Determination Theory, this kind of engagement supports a child's sense of autonomy and competence, nurturing intrinsic motivation — the desire to "draw more" and "express more."

Paper drawings eventually fade, and storage space has its limits. Digitizing artwork is one solution, but a service like figmee, which transforms children's drawings into 3D figurines, can breathe new life into their creations while conveying the message "your art is treasured" in a tangible and lasting form.

Conclusion

Decades of academic research make it clear that drawing is a remarkably important activity, simultaneously supporting the foundational pillars of a child's growth: cognitive development, emotional development, motor development, and social development.

Moreover, drawing builds self-efficacy through everyday success experiences and contributes to the formation of a growth mindset. And by preserving those artworks, children gain a concrete sense of their own progress, deepening their conviction that effort leads to growth. Research showing that childhood creative experiences can predict future success suggests that drawing — and the preservation of children's art — can have a lasting impact on a child's life.

The picture your child drew today is, as science confirms, a genuine "record of growth." Take a moment to pick it up, ask what it is about, and truly listen. And please, find a way to keep it safe. Within that picture lies a rich story of development that no number can measure — and a world of future possibility.

References

1. Lowenfeld, V. & Brittain, W. L. (1987). Creative and Mental Growth (8th ed.). Macmillan.
2. Kellogg, R. (1969). Analyzing Children's Art. National Press Books.
3. Malchiodi, C. A. (1998). Understanding Children's Drawings. Guilford Press.
4. Drake, J. E. & Winner, E. (2012). Confronting sadness through art-making: Distraction is more beneficial than venting. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(3), 255-261.
5. Bolwerk, A., Mack-Andrick, J., Lang, F. R., Dörfler, A., & Maihöfner, C. (2014). How art changes your brain: Differential effects of visual art production and cognitive art evaluation on functional brain connectivity. PLOS ONE, 9(7), e101035.
6. Fivush, R. (2008). Remembering and reminiscing: How individual lives are constructed in family narratives. Memory Studies, 1(1), 49-58.
7. Greer, T. & Lockman, J. J. (1998). Using writing instruments: Invariances in young children and adults. Child Development, 69(4), 888-902.
8. Ring, K. (2006). What mothers do: Everyday routines and rituals and their impact upon young children's use of drawing for meaning making. International Journal of Early Years Education, 14(1), 63-84.
9. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W.H. Freeman.
10. Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
11. Root-Bernstein, R., Allen, L., Beach, L., Bhadula, R., Fast, J., Hosey, C., ... & Pawelec, K. (2008). Arts foster scientific success: Avocations of Nobel, National Academy, Royal Society, and Sigma Xi members. Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology, 1(2), 51-63.
12. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.
13. Egana-delSol, P. (2023). The impacts of a high-school art-based program on academic achievements, creativity, and creative behaviors. npj Science of Learning, 8, 39.
14. Mak, H. W. & Fancourt, D. (2019). Arts engagement and self-esteem in children: Results from a propensity score matching analysis. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1449(1), 36-45.
15. Homesha Project (2018). Study on the effects of displaying children's photos and artwork on self-esteem. Homesha Project Research Report.
16. Runco, M. A., Millar, G., Acar, S., & Cramond, B. (2010). Torrance tests of creative thinking as predictors of personal and public achievement: A fifty-year follow-up. Creativity Research Journal, 22(4), 361-368.
17. Gajda, A., Karwowski, M., & Beghetto, R. A. (2017). Creativity and academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(2), 269-299.