unusual ways and note its effect on the shadow. While not being a case of drawing as in creating marks, it can still be argued to be an intentionally constructed image.
Shadow play in chimpanzees was studied by Boysen et al. (1994), but in an imita-tion context. Both a 3 year old and an 8 year old copied the making of manual shadow puppets on a brightly lit wall. They also showed that they understood the shadow cast by objects. Only the older animal, however, also displayed recognition of her own shadow.
Ladygina-Kohts found it difficult to judge if Joni enjoyed the visual aspect or the motor aspect of drawing the most.
Apes often do not want to be disrupted when painting, and they do not like to be urged to continue once they consider themselves finished. Authors (i.e. de Waal, 2001) have imagined this to be about the painting as a finished or unfinished prod-uct, when it rather could be about the activity. Apes probably do not like to be in-terrupted in any activity that they enjoy, or forced to continue something against their will. It does not have to do with considering the product finished or unfinished at all.
Other apes, like the adult chimpanzee female Alpha in Schiller’s (1951) study, do not seem to care if they are interrupted, and they are not at all protective of their finished work. Schiller (1951) thus concluded that Alpha was not particular inter-ested in the end product of her drawing, but rather enjoyed the activity. However, her interest was by no means solely in the motor activity since she did not work when given pointed sticks instead of pencils in control sessions. She also stopped working as soon she broke the pencil points, and instead made her wish for a new, sharpened, pencil known to the experimenter. The perceptual aspect was thus very much an integral part of her enjoyment. Similar conclusions can be drawn from a longitudinal study of chimpanzee infant scribbling on computer touchscreens by Tanaka et al. (2003). All subjects scribbled substantially less when there was no visi-ble colour feedback. In addition, different colours elicited different amounts of scribble.
It is possible that apes, perhaps especially when painting, seldom focus on the end product, i.e. the sum of all the strokes, but enjoy each stroke on its own. A sugges-tive counter example can be found in Morris (1980, cited in Lenain, 1997) where the chimpanzee Congo seemingly continues where he left off in completing a fan-pattern, his hallmark motif. Otherwise claims for aesthetic composition seem to be weak (Lenain, 1997).
But in accordance with ape painting being more about the process than the product, still some claims of a compositional view of the activity as such can be made. For example, some apes seem to apply a relational view of the marks on the paper and not only see each mark as separate. When for example a shape is positioned by an experimenter to the right, the subject subsequently focuses its drawing equally far to the left. Or if given a paper with a pre-made shape on it, they tend to focus their scribble inside the borders of this space. Both effects were found in Schiller (1951) and Morris (1963) (fig. 14, p. 186).
However, in Schiller’s (1951) study glued-on, cut-out, or dotted shapes, were only marked within if they were larger than an inch in diameter, unless there were several of them in which case each received a check mark. When pre-printed shapes are too small ape painters instead seem to focus on their borders, or crosses-over the whole shape. Morris (1963) believed the latter behaviour to be a form of manipula-tion of what was perceived as objects in the paper, thus a case of reality mode proc-essing. Schiller made the same observation, noting that Alpha poked at and explored
the shapes, as if using the pencil as a finger “in an attempt to scratch beneath the figure or to scrape it off” (Schiller, 1951).
If lines instead of shapes were pre-drawn they were either specifically targeted (at an angle) or used to divide the paper into separate drawing surfaces (Schiller, 1951;
Morris, 1963). In conclusion, compositions made by apes seem to be quite affected by the type of visual surface that they can interact with.
Figure 14. Targeting of a pre-printed shape by a go-rilla (left) and claimed bal-ancing of a shape by a chimpanzee (right). From Morris (1963).
The balancing of skewed pre-printed shapes is the most promising indication of a relational view of the drawing. Both Morris (1963) and Schiller (1951), found that if single smaller shapes were skewed off the centre of the paper, they were balanced with marks on the opposite side. Schiller (1951) judged this effect to be a balancing of mass.
Balancing might only be true for pre-printed, or glued on, shapes. If balancing or filling-in would also be done in relation to marks previously drawn by the subject itself, the claims for composition would be much stronger. This does not seem to have been the case in any of the studies. The subjects did also not readily complete incomplete pre-printed geometrical figures when the shapes were continuous, but in Schiller (1951) Alpha targeted an empty space if the shape to be completed was made up of lower-level elements, as in filling in the space where the missing square would be in a circle of squares. Neither Schiller nor Morris came up with the idea of testing incomplete figural drawings, for example of a face missing an eye. That could be a promising experiment for the future.
With regards to balancing and completion it should be noted that neither Smith (1973) nor Boysen et al. (1987) managed to replicate Schiller (1951) and Morris (1963) when subjecting three young chimpanzees respectively with similar materials.
All enjoyed scribbling, marking stimulus figures and filled in large empty spaces, but no claims for composition effects can be made from the results. Terrace (1980) on the other hand report that the young chimpanzee in his sign-language research, Nim, habitually joined circles that had been pre-drawn on paper by scribbling back and forth between them.
Another example of composition is the careful choice and application of colours.
The juvenile chimpanzee Congo in Morris (1963), for example, became famous for his fan patterns of discretely separated colours. When the process rather than the composition is the focus paintings tend to become a grey mess.
When Viki started to paint with colours she smeared the paint together, clearly enjoying the physical properties of paint. With time, however, she started to separate colours and seemed to pay attention to their visual effect. She even washed the brushes on her own accord between colour changes (Hayes & Nissen, 1971). At the same time a transition could be seen in her pen scribblings. At 4 years of age she
started to make a new type of “hen scratchings” with great concentration. This might mirror Joni’s change from just lines to small acute angles in Ladygina-Kohts (1935/2002). As with her painting, Viki’s first type of scribble had likewise been more about the process than the product. When human comparison subjects of Viki’s age started to make representational drawings Viki and Joni held on to their hen scratchings.
When looking at ape paintings in Lenain (1997) and Morris (1963) the two styles represented in Viki’s painting development can easily be distinguished. They could be called a smearing style and a compositional style. However, a feeling for composition, as in balancing figures, and insensitivity to colour use, as in smearing, are not mutually exclusive. Alpha did not change the location on where she was scribbling when handed a new colour, nor did she take into account the colour of the paper when choosing colours, which resulted in designs that could barely be seen. But still she was very apt at balancing and completing some geometric designs (Schiller, 1951).