Art Students: Do They Really Draw What They Know about the Inner Body?

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to examine seven case studies and ascertain whether the imagos internalized by students of Fine Arts, a Young Person and an Elderly Person can be reworked, after the students have been submitted to a course in Anatomy. In the present study, we have combined two methods - gathering written responses and drawings - and examined what students know about the organs they drew and used a content analysis grid to evaluate the mental representation of the interior of the body of both profiles (Young Person and Elderly Person), before and after academic training (Anatomy classes). The preliminary data collected provided a prima facie scenario for the existence of at least one sequencial comulative progression in the development of the art students drawings. However further research is needed to establish the extent to which this finding might apply beyond the tasks assigned in the present protocol.