At what age do children typically start drawing people?

[KateandtheGirls]

You know the kind of thing I mean - a big circle for the head, sticks coming out for arms and legs.

DD was 2y3m and 15 days.

We are so sad that we have kept a dated copy of her first real drawing......And the day she started she did about 15 in quick succession.

She still loved drawing people 18 months on, but her drawings are a bit more realistic now (better than mine anyway!)

No idea myself, but I found this on the CBeebies website.

My dd has just started doing big circles with stick arms and legs and a smiley face - she's 3 on xmas day. Up until now she never drew anything with much meaning then all of a sudden she could draw people!! (They're all dated and stuck around the house!! )

Well my ds is 2.6 and he can only draw scribbles!

oh no maybe there's some of the outlaws in DD after all! PIL are both artists whereas none of my family can draw a straight line with a ruler....

She will sit and draw for around 2 hours at a time

Thanks for your answers. DD2 just did this for the first time the other day, completely out of the blue. She even drew hair and a hat! She's 2y6.5m, and I thought it seemed kind of early, certainly earlier than her sister, but from Issymum's very helpful link (I think you must have made a typ in the URL, but I found it here ), between the ages of 2 and 4 is when they start this. I guess there must be a big range.

Maybe you have a little picasso on your hands!

My ds is no where near drawing people.

Thanks for that Link KateandtheGirls,interesting My Ds scribbles anything except paper

dd started doing this at the beginning of the summer so around 2.9 years. ds never went through this phase. He refused to draw anything much until it looked as he wanted it so his people have always had head, bodies and legs but he must have been neare 4 when he began. They are still pretty unsophisticated a couple of years on.

My ds has only been doing this since he was about 4.5 !! Was all scribble before that..

DD is 4.5 and drew a person with a little froggy type thing in its belly at the last mumsnetter city lunch - it was me with DS in my belly!!

dd has just started drawing figures - no bodies, just massive heads and arms and legs, etc. she was 3 last month

DS is 3y8m and doesn't draw anything - just scribbles (and its always a space rocket).

I have noticed that if you watch them "scribble" and ask them what it while they do it, it's actually nowhere near as random as the finished product looks. DD2's first "named" drawings were cats - not people. The final thing looked like a random scribble but if you watched her and talked to her she'd tell you that the first bit (a shape of some sort...)was the head, the random dots were eyes and mouth and the straight lines were whiskers. It all made perfect sense

just been to look at the scrap book: dd1 drew eyes and mouth onto a face (already drawn by a grown up) when she was 18 months, drew a circle with eyes and mouth when she was just over two and started adding legs on at 2 and 3 months

Sounds to me like the girls do this earlier than the boys, a bit like potty training!!

DS1 has just drawn the first recognisable person with a face (that I've seen anyway, could have done it at nursery I suppose) and he is 3yrs6months.

Not very big into drawing and colouring though - 2 minutes of it and he's back to his trains

ds has just drawn his first person last week - and now there's no stopping him - he is almost 4½! All the girls in his class have been drawing them for at least a year but all he was interested in was doing a 'scribble'. I've seen such an improvement in everything since he started school, and this is really impressive (to us anyway)! He has just drawn a planet with an alien - he had to tell me what they were but still!

Hello Batters - yes I have been AWOL from MN, since my dd was born - fairly difficult first few months, and I got out of the habit somehow. Its good to be back in the land of the living (if only virtually)!