This study examined the common styles of art portrayed in drawings by 30 gifted high school students. The students were asked to draw anything they wanted and their drawings were then rated by two art teachers and categorized as abstract, impressionist, expressionist, or realistic. A chi-squared test found that while abstract art was most common, the differences in proportions of each style were not statistically significant. Therefore, the null hypothesis that gifted students would portray an equal proportion of styles could not be rejected. The results provide insight into the creative thought processes of intellectually talented students.

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Common Portrayal of Art in Gifted Students
In what ways can a gifted student’s mind think creatively? The
purpose of this experiment was to gain insight on how an
intellectually talented student’s mind can think along the lines of
creativity. The goal was to determine the common style of art
portrayed through the drawings of the gifted students that can
also elicit the students’ personality. A group of 30 students were
asked to draw anything that he/she would like along with filling
out a very short questionnaire with an unlimited amount of time.
The drawings were handed down to two art teachers to evaluate
as one of these common styles of art- abstract, impressionist,
expressionist, or realistic. A chi squared goodness of fit test was
conducted to test the relationship. The results determined that
the proportion of each style of art differs from the others with
abstract being favored the most. The p-value was high with a
value of 0.833 indicating that the results are not significant. The
implications affect intellectual teens on their level of creativity
and what each style of art says about them. Further studies can be
performed to test the effect of a specific style of art on a
student’s intellect behavior.
Abstract
Introduction
This experiment consisted of sample size of 30 students. All
students were from Southwest Virginia Governor’s School because
of their quality to stand as gifted, talented students. These
students were in either eleventh or twelfth grade in high school
and male or female. All the students only participated if their
consent forms (See Appendix) were signed by participant and
parent if the participant was under 18. Along with the consent
forms, the 4-question questionnaire (See Appendix) was handed
along with it. When the consent forms were returned, the
questionnaire had already been filled out. The purpose of this
questionnaire was to gain more insight about each student and
whether or not it has relevance to the results at the end. The
testing was conducted on the campus of Southwest Virginia
Governor’s School in the computer lab room. The students were
handed a plain, white sheet of paper, 8.5x11 inches (Excellent
Copy Paper, New River Office Supply) and #2 lead pencils
(Papermate, Wal-Mart). There were also boxes of colored pencils
(Crayola Company) for each student to use derived from Mrs.
Rebecca Phillip’s classroom in Governor’s School for color to
emphasize the different styles of art. The students were given an
unlimited time to draw, so they started as soon as their supplies
were given to them. The students were called in 6 at a time to 4
at a time to 3 at a time to the computer lab. For this reason, the
testing took three days to complete. Each drawing in accordance
to its questionnaire was given a number so that it can be identified
in isolation as no names were going to be revealed.
After this process, the drawings were handed down to two art
teachers: Mrs. Adams from Galax High School and Mrs. Steinberg
from Galax Middle School. Each teacher was asked to rate the
drawing one by one. By rating, it means the style of art of each
drawing. The choices were given from realistic, abstract,
impressionistic, or expressionistic. Both teachers were given 30
forms along with the student number already written in each, with
a total of 60 forms.
The goal was to analyze the ratings and determine the
correlation it has that corresponds to the gifted students. To
analyze the results obtained, a chi square goodness of fit test was
performed in order to evaluate the relationship between what is
expected and what is obtained, between the null hypothesis and
the alternative hypothesis.
Methods & Materials
Results
The null hypothesis is that the gifted students will portray an
equal proportion of common style of art. The alternative
hypothesis is that there will be at least one proportion of style of
art that will differ. In this case, all styles of art differed from the
others. Abstract art was favored the most, then realistic, then
impressionist, and expressionist came in last on average. The chi-
square goodness of fit test for the first set of data (first 30 ratings)
revealed a P-value of 0.112. The chi square test for the second set
of data had a P-value of 0.469. To find the overall average ratings,
a chi square two way test was used. A final P-value of 0.833 was
given. Since the P-value of 0.833 is significantly higher than .05,
the frequencies of each style of art are not significantly different.
Therefore, we fail to reject the null hypothesis.
Results Conclusion
The failure to reject the null hypothesis concludes that the frequency of the four
styles of art are not significantly different between the ratings of the two teachers.
The chi square test is used to test the observed frequencies from the expected and
in this case, there is no statistical difference between the two. The results favor
abstract probably because the art pertains to the lack of physical objects and
rather focuses on representation that is non-objective. The art leaves the details
and specific lines out to leave only a discernible form that concentrates on some
type of feeling and senses of humans and less on tangibility. However, the
impressionist style of art was not rated second as inferred. This style of art, having
to deal with nature and the environments around you, requires to be highly
observant. Realistic art, on the other hand, is more tangible than the other styles
of art and can be easier to draw when it comes to the thought processes. Keeping
in mind that the target sample was gifted students, realistic art ranking in second
highest was unexpected.
The questionnaire delineates no relationship between the students who take an
art class and the common style of art they portrayed. There seems to be a common
relationship between the preference of humanities and the impressionist and
abstract art the student portrayed. The ideology of humanities perhaps renders a
discernible and nature-loving quality rather than an acute and reserved quality.
Sports, also, don't seem to have an effect on the styles of art in general. However,
the data shows that the very few students who play tennis always express the
realistic style of art. The implications will affect intellectual teens on their level of
creativity and what it says about them. For further studies, it would be wise to look
into the relevance of a style of art to a student's intellect behavior and whether
this style of art had a major affect on these students. Although the results were
insignificant, it still provides knowledge on the common innovative thought of
gifted students.
Works Cited
Acknowledgements
The author will like to recognize Mrs. Sherry Pugh for being the
sponsor and for providing the guidance for this experiment, Mrs.
Suzette Kilgore and Mrs. Jerri England for assisting on the
statistical analysis, and Mrs. Rebecca Phillips for allowing to
conduct the experiment on Southwest Virginia Governor’s School
property and assisting on materials needed to conduct the
experiment. The student will also like to acknowledge the art
teachers Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Steinberg for their participation and
time in the experiment.
Art is communicative and does call for high experimental research. It
unravels layers of history of an art creation and is highly impacted by
empathy. Empathy exercises imagination which links to creativity. It
opens a tunnel of collaborative feelings between the artists, his/her art
piece, and the viewer which is why it is essential to gain knowledge
about the history and culture of the artist. It helps to distinguish the art
piece as not an isolated creation but of something that has depth and
context. To view a drawing as how the artist would want you to see it is
a difficult task for the artist (Bond, 2007). A student who is gifted would
find this easier than a student who is not.
Creativity plays a major role in the contexts of art. People identify
creativity with various definitions in which all center on the idea of
imagination and innovation that goes beyond the average ways of doing
things. This proposes the question as how a gifted student is defined as
what it is. If one can perceive the average thought processes in more
than one way and rarely in many ways above the traditional essence,
he/she is said to be intellectually talented (Bryant and Throsby, 2006).
A Brazilian study has been done to acknowledge the correlation between
creativity and intelligence. The study used an intellect progressive test
to test for intelligence and a drawing test to examine creative thinking.
The correlation delineated that there was a significant relationship
between the two and that they go favorably hand in hand (Virgolim,
2005).
Abstract art will be a more common style of art portrayed in gifted
students. Abstract art is unique from the rest in that it focuses on
feelings with less amounts of distractions using colors and shapes. One
can't specify it as a physical object. The other types of art that will be
identified are impressionist, expressionist, and realistic. Impressionist
deals with nature and often the glimmers of light it likes to depict.
Expressionist concentrates on feeling and emotion through a drawing.
Realistic art is not hard to distinguish as it shows objects as one really
sees them. Gifted students can rely on art to elicit what they believe in
and their interests. The artist Kiefer exemplifies Odysseus, the ancient
Greek King, as an adventurer of uncertain nature. He links history to his
spontaneous artwork. A simple form of nature that receives creative
response is the Ligam Stone in India which is greatly worshipped. Ian
Burne creates art by painting glossy, blue stripes on yellow matt field.
He was interested in optical speed. As the stripes widened, he figured,
the slower its horizontal motion appeared to be (Bond, 2007). Whether
it is of historical, spiritual, or scientific nature, a talented student's
mind can vary on how it perceives creativity through the means of art.
Several gifted students were asked to draw a picture of their
preference to determine the most common style of art portrayed in
highly intellectual students. To achieve this, two art teachers were
asked to rate the drawings as a style of art- abstract, impressionist,
expressionist, or realistic. These styles of art illuminate the creativity
and personality of these students.
Kimi Kumar
Boddy-Evans, Marrion. Absract art: An Introduction.
<http://painting.about.com/od/abstractart/a/abstract_art.htm> 2 December 2010
Bond, Anthony. 2007. Why Art Matters.
http://www.artinfluence.com/whyartmatters.html 6 December 2010
Bryant, William D.A. and Throsby, David. 2006. Chapter 16 Creativity and the
Behavior of Artists. Handbook on the Economics of Art and Culture 1:507-529
Virgolim, Angela M. Rodrigues. 2005. Creativity and intelligence: A study of Brazilian
gifted and talented students. Dissertations Collection for University of Connecticut
Paper AAI31393748.
Preckel, Franzis. and Holling, Heinz. and Wiese, Michaela. 2005. Relationship of
intelligence and creativity in gifted and non-gifted students: An investigation of
threshold theory. Personality and Individual Differences 40(1):159-170.
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Common Portrayal of Art in Gifted Students