上の絵は、さる 2 日に娘たち一家が揃ってわが家を訪れていたとき、次女の娘（幼稚園児）が描いたもの。右横に平仮名で、自分の名に「ちゃん」をつけて書いてあるので、自分の近未来の理想像を描いたものと思われる。顔の左右に大きく下がっているものは、長く伸ばした茶色の髪のつもりである（原画では茶色の色鉛筆で塗ってあるが、スキャンとコントラストを強める修正の結果、ご覧の色に変わった）。
私たちの世代が幼時に描いた女の子の絵は、おかっぱ頭に富士山型のスカートで、スカートの両端から太い脚が垂直に出ているものと相場が決まっていた。他方、いまどきの幼時の絵は、大きな目や口、細長い脚など、時代の美意識の影響を大きく受けているようだ。
ちなみに、私がごく幼い頃に描いた女の子の絵でも、スカートの両端から脚が出ていたが、母からすぐに、「脚はスカートの中程から揃って出ているように描くと、本当の女の子らしく見えるよ」と教えられ、以後はそのように描いていた。
On Wednesday, families of my daughters came to our house. Then, my second daughter's daughter (a kindergartener) drew the picture above. To the right of the drawing, she wrote her own name by adding "chan" (the diminutive suffix to call a little girl) in hiragana. Therefore, I think that the picture shows a vision of herself in the near future. The large things hanging on both sides of the girl's face express brown hair stretched long (in the original picture, those were colored with a brown pencil; but scanning and enhancement of contrast have changed the color as seen here).
The picture of a girl people of our generation drew at an early age typically had bobbed hair and a skirt of the shape like Mt. Fuji, from side ends of which thick legs came vertically downwards. On the other hand, pictures drawn by small children of these days seem to be much affected by the aesthetic sense of the present time, showing large eyes, wide mouth and thin and long legs.
By the way, I also drew, in my childhood, pictures of girls with legs coming out from the side ends of the skirt. However, my mother soon said to me, "If you draw legs so as to come out together from the middle of the skirt, it will look like a real girl." After that, I drew girls in the way she told me.
