Drawing Skills and Gender

Complexity level:	3
Project cost ($):	10
Time required:	1 hour to prepare, 1 hour for the science project experiment
Material availability:	Easily found
Safety concerns:	None

Hypothesis

Female participants are better at their drawing skills than male participants.

Overview

Drawings

Drawing is the visual representation of an object, a person or scenery as a two dimensional image. It is normally done on a piece of paper, canvas, board or leather. Instruments used to make drawings include pencils, charcoals, crayons, paint and many other tools. Drawings are sometimes completed with water color paint, oil paint or shading.

There are many types and styles of drawing. Drawings can be in the form of a portrait, which is a hand drawn picture of a person. Portrait drawing originated as a means of preserving how a person looked, and served this purposes until the camera was invented. Cartoons and comics are also a popular form of drawing that are combined with humor to entertain readers.

Commercially, drawings are used for advertisements, packaging and other marketing purposes. Technical drawings are a necessary tool in many professions such as architecture and engineering. Scientists and engineers use drawings to illustrate and communicate certain processes or information that is sometimes difficult to grasp or understand if explained only in words.

Scientific Terms

Visual representation, two dimensional images

Materials

The materials required for this science fair project:

-    20 male students age 14
-    20 female students age 14
-    40 pieces of drawing paper
-    40 pencils
-    A basket of fruits
-    A classroom
-    An art teacher

Procedure

1.    For this experiment, the independent variable is the gender of the participants. The dependent variable is the drawing skills of the participants. This is determined by having an art teacher grade the 40 drawings made by the participants. The constants (control variables) are the age of the oarticipants, the type of objects or fruits to be drawn, the lighting in the room and the type of drawing paper and pencil provided.

2.    40 participants are randomly assigned numbers 1 to 40. A list of the names, gender and assigned numbers of the participants is made.

3.    The fruit in the basket are properly arranged and placed at the front of the classroom. The 40 participants are brought into the classroom and asked to sit at their tables. Each participant is provided with a piece of drawing paper and a pencil. Make sure that each participant has a clear view of the fruit basket.

4.    The participants are informed that they must not write their names on the piece of drawing paper. They must only write the number assigned to them and their assigned numbers are to be written at the back of the drawing paper. The participants are then given one hour to draw the fruit. After 1 hour, the drawings are collected from the participants. When the drawings are collected, each participant’s assigned numbers on the back of the drawings are verified and confirmed. The 40 drawings are then given to the art teacher for grading.

5.    Once the art teacher has graded the drawings, they are collected and grouped according to whether the drawings were done by a male or female participant. The average scores of the 2 groups are calculated and the results recorded in the table below.

Results

It is observed that the male participants had a higher average grade compared to the female participants.

Gender	Male	Female
Average drawing grade	78%	72%

Use the below graph to plot the results of above observation

Drawing skills science fair project

Conclusion

The hypothesis that female participants are better in their drawing skills than male participants is proven false.

The earliest known drawings were made by cavemen during prehistoric times on the walls of stone caves. Nowadays, drawings are done on paper, canvas or leather. Drawings that are used in commercial advertisements or produced as artistic masterpieces can be sold for very high prices. Computer art and illustration is becoming increasingly popular as input devices such as pressure-sensitive drawing tablets become cheaper and better in quality. Software such as AutoCAD are able to produce not only two dimensional drawings but also three dimensional drawings as well.

Also consider

Repeat the experiment to compare the ability of male and female participants in painting.

Try to perform the experiment using different age groups to determine the effect of age on drawing skills.

References

Drawing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawing

How to improve your drawing skills - http://www.ehow.com/how_2185369_improve-drawing-skills.html

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