Pictorial mentality: From imagination to reality in orphan house

Abstract

Children depict their surrounding in the pictures they draw. They consider the focus on the integrity, happiness, and the peace among the members of the family along with the water, sun and a beautiful house. On the other hand, the orphans living in the orphanhouse focus on new clothes, family and private rooms. In a study performed in 2005, some orphans, 40 individuals at the range age of 10 to 13, were asked to draw what they imagine about their current life on the paper. 60% of them depicted mothers and fathers in wedding clothes near a beautiful house and a car, 30% drew a private room full of toys and 10% had drawings about new and expensive clothes. The favorite colors for most of them were yellow and/or pink in the background. Five years later in 2010, they were asked to draw the pictures about their desires and future plans. They drew themselves in the same role with the similar situations they conceived the previous five years. Most of them depicted themselves in big house with two chidren playing joyfully with their toys. Their jobs were somehow related to high income ones with ties and expensive clothes. The colors were more various relying more on brown and blue, which was related to their social interaction with other children in schools. The change in attitudes and beliefs cue to group interaction with other children and social education led them to modify some traces in their drawings. This paper tries to understand the orphans’ fundamental conception of life over time through their paintings.