This paper deals with the main theses of Gombrich's theory of pictorial representation as they pertain to the understanding of representational artworks and children's drawing. It is argued that the current linguistic-cognitive model of representation adopted from Goodman's theory provides an understanding of images and children's drawing in art education that is not only incomplete but also skewed. Rejecting the Western imitation theory of representation, Gombrich emphasized the schema as the basis of image-making, and the function of image in a social context as the primary cause of the development of different styles from the schema. This provides an unbiased explanation of multicultural images, and a close relationship between children's and adults' artistic images. However, according to Gombrich, image-perceiving is more biologically and emotionally grounded in that it elicits a similar response in the viewer as the original does. This view does justice to the emotional power that pictorial representation has exerted on the human psyche for so long and still does in our visual culture. The author argues that from this dualistic nature of image, we can also better understand children's drawing. Even though the form of their drawing is schematic and symbolic, the image's suggestive power prompts in the child vivid imagination and make-believe.