Never drawing people as a child

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Recently I was analyzing my own childhood and noticed a few things. As a child, I loved to draw and drew a lot - but I never drew people. Only animals or other things. I never tried to draw those “Mum and Dad and I” pictures that many children do.

I used to make up a lot of stories (and drew pictures for those stories), but the characters were also animals. Mostly cats. Walking, talking, wearing clothes. But cats, not people.

Probably it’s related, but I also never played dolls. I wasn’t interested in them at all. I preferred (again) stuffed animals and Lego or Meccano-like sets.

Is anyone else here like this? Is this an ASD thing?

Well, when I was younger I used to identify more with various animals, mostly marine ones, than I did with people. And as an adult I'm a very involved member of the furry community which is basically a group of people who are interested in anthropomorphism in the arts. There's a lot of ppl on the spectrum in that community. I don't think it's an ASD thing though. I was just always kind of fascinated with animals more than people growing up. Nowadays, on the professional side of things, I tend to be more and more fascinated with people. I'm seriously pursuing a career in qualitative sociology because of this interest.

My husband drew structures, cars, space ships etc. Never animals or people. If he drew people they had no faces. Field day for the school psychologist. Lol..

He also never drew family pictures. Those had no faces and arms. He told me looking at people makes him uncomfortable.

We met at art school, and his major was Industrial Design.

Never thought about this before but now that I am, I also never drew people. The kid pictures we still have around my house is of a koala bear I drew and a valentines day card where I dipped my hands in paint and made a heart with my hands (hard to explain). I use to like writing my name a lot for some reason too. Stars, hearts, animals were things I drew a lot. I also use to draw a house but no people next to it or inside it.

Excellent topic. I never drew people, or animals for that matter. Always cars, railway engines, aeroplanes, and the like. And maps, I drew hundreds of maps of a non-existent, inhabited archipelago. Being from Europe, I had never seen an accurate map of Bermuda, but somehow my fantasy world's map resembled that of Bermuda. When I first saw it in detail in Google maps, I was astonished to find the world I'd been scetching. Only it was smaller, perhaps three miles across.

I never photograph people, not even my friends. I only photograph landscapes and food. As for favourite paintings, its landscapes all the way. I also dislike looking at photos of people on Facebook, and I roll my eyes at selfies.

Ironically, this extrovert Aspie girl (whose symptoms are worse than mine) is always putting selfies in various poses on Facebook, and when the guys make sarcastic-complimentary comments at her expense, she's so thrilled.

You know, I never thought about that as an Aspie thing, but I never drew people as a kid, either. I drew obsessively, but my subjects were always robots, spaceships, and occasionally monsters. The robots especially would sometimes be incredibly detailed, with diagrams of their inner workings. I think the scales were probably all wrong though, even by child drawing standards. A person might have shown up from time to time - generally as a helmeted pilot. Even that would have been rare, however.

I wonder if my strong preference for abstract art is somehow related to this? Just about the only type of visual art I really enjoy that depicts human subjects is Byzantine iconography, and the people in Byzantine icons are heavily stylized.

When I was very young, I would draw animals, people and surreal landscapes. For me, the problem was not the topic, but the design. These drawings have really irregular forms, and I still have issues drawing proportional scales for most human drawings, despite how far I've improved since then.

I was bad at drawing and mostly drew things made up of geometric shapes. So I did draw people, but they were stick men with fork hands. A big problem I had with drawing was that I couldn't visualize something that didn't exist in front of me (and to this day I think artists are amazing people for being able to do that).

I think once or twice I copied pictures of cartoon characters from magazines I had, but they never came out right.

I didn't draw people as a small child, unless they were operating machinery or weapons or sailing on ships, etc. Never individuals interacting and certainly no family portraits.

By the time I was an adolescent, I had become captivated by comic book and fantasy art and drew people almost exclusively, primarily females and either facial portraits or figures in motion. I still only draw females spontaneously, males only if there's a specific reason to do so.

Horses and landscapes, almost exclusively. I was fairly good at those, so when I got into my teens I tried drawing people, but I sucked at faces. If I did manage a face at all, it was always totally expressionless.

I always drew pictures of people as a child, ever since I was about 2-3. I seemed to be a very people-orientated child. When I was really small I used to draw pictures of school children playing in the playground. Then when I got older (after about 7-8 ) I drew pictures of myself and my cousins and other relatives, including speech bubbles. I did draw pictures of other things besides people sometimes, but generally it had to be people. I also wrote stories of people too (mostly my life as a child). I just enjoyed it.

I didn't play with dolls much, but I did play with other toys. I didn't seem to have the ''Aspie'' play routine stereotype.

Oh yes, and I always did facial expressions too. I went into detail as well with the body language and facial expressions, that even my social worker noticed when my parents let her look through some of my drawings, and she said ''the facial expressions are really good''. No, I didn't have help with drawing my pictures. I just done them on my own.

Seems like I'm the only one here so far who always drew pictures of people as a child...

I don't remember my early childhood drawings so much, but I know I've always been more interested in drawing animals than people, though people do make an appearance. I'm very good at copying images from photographs or other drawings and having them come out highly accurate, but for some reason, I've never been able to do that with images of people or human faces, only objects and animals, even dragons, which are far more complex to draw than humans with regard to the amount of detail they have.

One time in grade school the school counselor wanted me to draw a parson. I refused and drew a cat instead.

When I was a child I pretty much only drew animals or fantastic creatures. I only drew people when the teachers asked stuff like "draw your family". I remember some counselors giving me paper and pencil during elementary school and asking me to draw whatever I wanted. I never drew real people but I remember drawing a fairy once, a boat another time and animals many times.
I remember I only drew dragons from age 8 to age 11.
When I was 12 I pretty much only drew landscapes.
I started drawing real people only at 13 when I started drawing as an hobby, and my past drawing history influenced me to the point that I had great difficulties learning how to draw people properly. Now I've mostly overcome it and can draw people pretty well, but still I can draw animals better and much more quickly.
Even at my last big psychiatric evaluation when I was 14 the first drawing the counselor asked me to do was a person but I decided to drae a horse and she let me. I also draw my family some sessions later though.