Three studies of children’s ability to create and detect expression of emotion in drawings are reported. In Study 1, children in grades one, four and seven were asked to deliberately vary their drawings of a tree to show “happiness” and sadness.” Compared to younger children, older children used a greater number of strategies to express emotion, were more likely to use color and line direction, were more likely to use themes of death, aging, lines, and seasons two, four, and six made drawings as in Study 1, and were administered the Metaphoric Triads Test(Kogan, Conner, Gross, & Fave, 1980) of visual metaphor comprehension. With the effects of age parnialled out, sensitivity to visual metaphor was related to the expressive use of themes of aging, illness, and death, and the use of the size or shape of the tree. In Study 3, preschool children viewed 12 specially constructed drawings in which emotion was expressed thematically (e.g., thunderstorm for anger) and 12 drawings in which emotion was expressed through abstract qualities of color or line. Children identifled the emotion expressed in the drawings at above chance levels for all picutres except abstract, and items. The conception of “expression” as a planned activity is discussed.