Geometric Perception

The original.

Artist #1: Adult

Artist #2: Teenager

Artist #3: 6 year old boy

I found it interesting that the pictures these people produced reflected their age and ability pretty accurately. It was interesting to see that, subconsciously, they each made these shapes into objects that they think of or see frequently (or, in the case of the six year old, things he imagines on a day-to-day basis). The six year old explained his picture to me as "a boy flying through the sky in a helicopter, toward the sun, with a jet pack on his back." He also added a little homey-touch by putting a bed in his "house" he created with the square and the triangle above it. The adult artist used the shapes to draw more logical objects. Rather than making the shapes into one big picture, she used the shapes that were given and chose to make them into objects that already exist in the shapes that she was given, rather than taking a more abstract approach as the six year old did. The teenage artist had just returned from school when she completed her drawing, therefore, she naturally formed the square and the triangle into a pencil. This was interesting to me because she drew what initially came to mind and her subconscious had been writing and reading all day at school, therefore, playing a large role in the reasoning behind her interpretation of the shapes. 

I learned a lot about perception and how, without even trying to do so, we tend to view things in the way that feels natural; we associate meaning of things as we have recently experienced them. That definition of perception proved itself true among each person sampled in this exercise.