I have seen this kind of drawing occasionally, usually when the child is
attempting to depict a sports scene: basketball, hockey, etc., where there
are markings on the floor or ground that give important information to the
viewer. Mesami Toku, a Japanese researcher in art education, (who is
friend of mine) looked at Eisner's 14 categories of spacial relations when
she was writing her dissertation. She was doing a cross-cultural study of
American and Japanese children's drawings. She found that Japanese
children used this bird's eye view more frequently than American children.
Eisner had not addressed this manner of depiction (because it is so
rare), so Mesami added it to Eisner's 14 categories along with another
category that helped her better describe Japanese children's drawings, it
was someting like a camera's view, I think she called it "photographic
view",where the people and objects were cut off by the edge of the paper,
similar to a photograph. Very interesting.
Daniella.
Daniella R. Barroqueiro, M.A.
Doctoral Student in Art Education
University of Illinois @ Champaign -Urbana
