Artistic Ability
In this section, we take a look at Nadia's horses and Stephen Wiltshire's buildings.

Nadia was one of the first carefully documented cases of an autistic child with exceptional drawing ability. Although she was a girl with hardly any language, her drawing skills far exceed normal stages of development. For example, at age three, she drew objects in perspective, a skill that is usually achieved only during adolescence, if at all. Nadia’s drawings were highly repetitive theme, reflecting her narrow but focused interests. For example, she was obsessed with horses at age three, and drew hundreds of horses over the following years. The horses were captured from a variety of angles, and with incredible vividness and accuracy.

Most remarkably, Nadia had not sat down to study real horses, but had drawn her pictures after seeing a horse in a story book. From this, she created endless numbers of images of what a horse looks like in any posture. Mysteriously, as Nadia began to speak around age 11, she gradually did fewer sketches, and now draws only ocassionally.

Stephen Wiltshire, is another individual with ASD whose childhood art has been published. He loves to draw buildings, but unlike Nadia, draws them from personal experience. He has drawn many of the landmarks structures in New York, London and other cities, such St. Paul’s Cathedral and The Eiffel Tower.

Amazingly, after viewing the original building only once, for just a short few minutes, Stephen is able to recreate the details after returning to his home or school, accurately capturing the style, size and layout of the grounds.

However, such exceptional drawing abilities are quite rare.