This paper traces a father's observations of the development of one child's drawing for a 15-month period beginning when the child was 3 years, 5 months old. Observations of nearly 400 drawings yielded the following generalizations: (1) drawing is symbolic almost from the beginning; (2) appreciation of the representational nature of drawing in the "scribbling" stage requires observation of the creative process; (3) the child's drawings were composed of recognizable routines (such as ovals, squares, and sunbursts) and strategies (such as filling in all open forms); (4) the combination of subroutines and strategies created a distinctive "style"; and (5) changes were largely attributable to the waxing and waning of specific subroutines and strategies rather than to general cognitive growth, suggesting that the child's drawing was more reflective of the development of a performance system than of a knowledge system. (Author/JMB)