John Willats (died April 2006)[1] was a psychologist and artist known for his research on pictorial systems of
depiction and
perspective, which included a taxonomy of the methods of visual projection used by various artists.[2] He was considered an expert on children's drawings and how children develop drawing abilities.[3]
In 2000, Willats completed a sculpture celebrating the millennium in a former hometown of
Bradford-on-Avon, England. The sculpture is a life-sized representation of a mill girl, known as "Millie", that celebrates the town's history.[8]
Willats's millennium statue 'Millie' in Bradford on Avon
Research
In Perspective and other drawing systems (1983), Willats and Dubery defined formal categories for pictorial systems, which they called projection systems.[9][10] Willats posited that people have an innate capability to understand the grammar of pictorial depictions, which is related to
Chomsky's theory of
universal grammar.[11] In Making sense of children's drawings, Willats proposed that children learn drawing in a manner comparable to language learning, by picking up increasingly complex rules of depiction.[5]
Books
Dubery, F. & Willats, J. (1972). Drawing systems. Studio Vista.
Dubery, F. & Willats, J. (1983). Perspective and other drawing systems. The Hubert Press.
Willats, J. (1997). Art and representation: New principles in the analysis of pictures. Princeton University Press.
Willats, J. (2006). Making sense of children's drawings. Psychology Press.
Representative papers
Willats, J. (1977). How children learn to draw realistic pictures. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29(3), 367–382.
Willats, J. (1981). What do the marks in the picture stand for? The child's acquisition of systems of transformation and denotation. Review of Research in Visual Arts Education, 7(1), 18-33.
Willats, J. (1987). Marr and pictures: an information-processing account of children's drawings. Archives de Psychologie, 55(213), 105-125.
Willats, J. (1992). The representation of extendedness in children's drawings of sticks and discs. Child Development, 63(3), 692-710.
Willats, J., & Durand, F. (2005). Defining pictorial style: Lessons from linguistics and computer graphics. Axiomathes, 15(3), 319-351.