The paper examines the early development of a highly talented child artist in light of three theories of graphic development in children: (1) drawing development is a search for increasingly satisfying solutions to graphic problems that proceeds along a stage-like path; (2) gifted children aspiring to be artists carefully imitate their culture's representational conventions; and (3) styles or projective systems are derived from natural perspective and are alternative ways of representation that are not ordered along a developmental dimension. Detailed analysis of the drawings of the child artist from the ages of 2 through 6 lead to the conclusion that even a precociously gifted child artist does not really skip stages or phases in his graphic development. The idea that drawings employ an arbitrary system of convention-based graphic symbols was not supported. The existence of an intrinsic logic that guides the child's motivated invention of drawing systems was supported. The drawings are attached. (14 references.) (DB)