Have you ever asked a child to draw a picture with Crayons? Quite often, you will end up with a field of green grass, a blue sky, a tree and a bird. Sometimes the bird is flying, sometimes it is sitting on top of the tree. Usually, the tree is of the apple variety. There is always quite a bit of variation in the subject matter. It may not be a landscape at all.

However, given one condition, there is always a constant. If the drawing is of a landscape, the blue sky will only be the top inch or so of the page, and the rest of the sky is left uncolored. Of course there are other factors, such as the age of the child, etc. But you know what I'm talking about.

What I want to know is why. Why do children only color the very top portion of the sky and not the rest? Its not as if the ground takes up 80% of the page. There is just a huge gap in the middle. Is it the way children perceive the sky as being above everything and they try to convey this idea by putting the sky at the top? Is it the fact that the sky seems to fade as you get closer to the horizon due to haze, etc and the child is exaggerating this phenomenon? Or is the child just lazy, and coloring most of the page blue is too much work? The grass always goes down to the bottom of the page, so I don't think this is it. Could this be a child's first foray into impressionism or abstract art? Some would argue that all drawing by children are abstract art (stick people, etc). I'd bet dollars to donuts that some psychology student at some college has done a thesis on this. If not, someone should.

One answer, from unnamed child:

"The sky is up there. You know, up there, where the sun is.
Down here is the ground, where I am and the animals are and trees and stuff. It's at the bottom, 'cause that's where we are.
The middle is just the middle, there's nothing there but air."

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