Abstract:

Painting is an action that facilitates and enrichs communication for children and adults (Halmatov, 2015:7). It is also one of the ways to express children’s feelings and thoughts. As soon as they acquire the ability to hold a pen, the children who are given them the opportunity begin to paint (Artut, 2004:24; David, 2014:4). Children reflect their inner worlds in their pictures, not a visual truth, and find the opportunity to express their needs, desires, fears, and happiness through the picture. The pictures of children reflect their relationships with their peers and adults, in addition to giving information about themselves. It is clear how children perceive the family images, the individual in the family, and the role of themselves (Malchiodi, 2013:11). It is quite difficult to evaluate the pictures that children draw from a psychological and emotional point of view (Malchiodi, 2013:158). To be able to do image analysis, it is necessary to obtain basic training on subjects such as reflective images, ethical subjects, measurement and evaluation, to be aware of and practice the spiritual structures such as consciousness, transconscious and unconscious, with projective tests (Halmatov, 2015:7; Malchiodi, 2013:298). Deciding about children through the picture is a very sensitive topic and should be addressed by the specialists of the topic such as a psychologist, a clinical psychologist, a child psychiatrist. This study is designed on the basis of not evaluating children’s images from a psychological point of view, but only examining them from a content point of view. According to this study, the aim is to study the basic emotional conditions of five to six-year-old children (happiness, sadness, fear) through the pictures they draw. The study aimed at studying the basic emotional conditions of children aged five to six years (happiness, sadness, fear) through the pictures they draw. This research is designed in phenomenological designs in the quality model. The work group, which continued to an independent kindergarten located in the district of Ankara or Keçiören in the 2016-2017 educational year, consisted of a total of 66 children, including 30 girls and 36 men. Children read stories about their emotional conditions before they were asked to draw pictures about their emotional conditions. In the study, each used three stories books that reflect the separate state of happiness, sadness and fear. The data process was then collected. As a data collection tool, visual materials and semi-configured conversation forms have been used from the quality data collection methods. In the study, two different types of data were obtained, visual and text. I can indicate visual data; the texts are evaluated through content analysis. It focuses on signals and symbols. It is concerned about what visual objects are and what they represent (Glesne, 2013: 258). It makes it possible for the thoughts to be studied in the framework of the sights. It can be defined as an art practice in which individuals reflect their feelings and experiences (Smith-Shank, 2016: 56). According to this, this study analyzed the children’s three basic emotional conditions, “happiness, sadness and fear”, in their pictures by means of an indicative analysis technique. Content analysis is a technique of collecting and analysing text content. Content analysis enables the disclosure of content in a communication source (Neuman, 2012: 466). As a text in this study, the stories about the pictures of children were analyzed. Additionally, these two data sources and data analysis have been triangulated with the combination of the data. Data triangulation is a method that strengthens research by combining various methods. This way the consistency of research data and analysis can be tested (Patton, 2014: 248). In this study, the consistency between them was tested using two different data sources and analysis in reflecting children’s understanding of their basic emotional conditions in pictures and conversations. In his pictures and stories, the subject of the story, the characters, the images in the story book, etc. The images of the children affected were not assessed.  The research finds that children can reflect their experiences or feelings about the basic emotional conditions of happiness, sadness and fear through pictures. It has been shown that the pictures children have mostly reflected their emotions, the happiness of being in physical activity, the sadness of physical and emotional violence, and the fears of fears of non-existences. In their paintings and stories, the paintings of the children determined to be influenced by the subject of the story, the characters, the images in the story book have not been evaluated.