paint cut paste

as a child, i was a HUGE muppet fanatic. i listened to “the muppet movie” soundtrack over and over and over in my bedroom every single day for several years. my favorite holiday album was (and still is!) john denver & the muppets: a christmas together. when i was 5, i had a rainbow painted on my bedroom wall and muppet stuffed animals strewn across my bed. my master’s thesis was titled: “the rainbow connection: the chakra system as a framework for transpersonal art psychotherapy.
” (okay, so nevermind the latter part of the title — i was trying to convey that as an adult, i never got over the rainbow connection piece.) i had a major boo hoo session when jim henson passed. i met his daughter when out with some puppeteer friends when i lived in NYC, and asked her to draw kermit on a napkin, which i kept. i’m a muppet weirdo. yep. so you can imagine my muppet-crazed-child-of-the-70s elation when my daughter fell in love with the muppets, too.

while she has never been into sesame street like many of her friends (N complains, “there’s no plot mommy! it just jumps around, and i want a story!”), she loves all of the muppet show/muppet movie characters that jim henson created. she’s a bit lonely in this, as most of her preschool friends don’t know who gonzo is, but she’s happy to teach them by drawing pictures like this at preschool:

animal and kermit

N is particularly into the muppet band, the electric mayhem:

can you picture that?

when N sees my husband in the morning, the verrry first words out of her mouth are, “be floyd!” most of my days are spent swinging my hair back and forth, saying “fer sherrr” while pretending to be janice. and N is, of course, animal. she will see a letter “A” and say, “that’s what my name starts with, because i’m not N, i’m animal!”

family portrait: floyd, janice, and animal

we play a “guess which muppet i am” 20 questions type of game for hours on end many days, and she LOVES finding obscure characters to pretend to be, like beauregard, lew zealand, sweetums, and dr. bunson honeydew. she often tries to take over when we have our computers on so she can type out “our” names.

because the muppet songs, the muppet show, the muppet movies, the muppet stuffed animals, and the muppet personalities have taken over our home and art for the past three months, i figured i should post about it here. that is authentically the subject matter of most of the art and play happening in our home at the moment. do your child’s favorite characters find their way into the art in your house, too?

with thanksgiving upon us, our wee little greeting card factory has been in turkey mode. now, we usually don’t send cards for thanksgiving, but N made some cool turkeys this year that were certainly card-worthy. also, we don’t eat turkey for thanksgiving (all vegetarians over here) so we befriend the turkeys on thanksgiving… and apparently we keep them safe at our house..? oh, read on.

these handprint turkeys had be at “gobble gobble” when they came home with N from preschool.

i love the multi-colored tail feathers and the wattle detail.

this is such a simple, yet adorable, project for any age! just when we were good and ready to write some sweet notes to family members on the inside of the cards, N decided she wanted to keep them for our fridge at home. she couldn’t part with these turkeys! so she got to work at her art table, drawing new turkeys with crayons on small unlined index cards.

but then, she would only agree to send one of them to gwee (my mom)… she wanted to keep the rest for – you guessed it – the display on our fridge. (we’re having an art-hoarding issue over here.) the red turkey managed to make it into the mailbox with this sweet handwritten (by N) note inside.

it reads: "i am thankful for you! love, N"

at least this is a digital age where the rest of the family can get a really nicely homemade e-card of these turkeys on thanksgiving day! (sorry family and friends, we’re saving turkeys over here… literally!)

i am grateful for you, dear readers.

happy tofurkey day to all!

nevermind that it’s not yet thanksgiving… somehow our spirits are already in the christmas-mode around here, much like a prematurely decorated department store. we haven’t busted out the stockings or the tree yet, but N has been singing “rudolph the red-nosed reindeer” constantly since december 2008, pretty much on a daily basis no matter the season. she is always anticipating the holiday. the other day i found her at her art table, drawing and coloring, as she is often doing.

this time she was making a picture of santa claus. i just had to share it with you, as i was quite impressed! (yep, i’m a proud momma.) i just love that this entire project was completely child-invented and child-directed.

N said that she wanted to send the picture to santa claus in the north pole, along with her christmas list for the toys she wants his elves to make for her. (even though we downplay the actual existence of one man named santa around here, in favor of “he’s the spirit of christmas” explanations, the mass consciousness around his myth as permeated our household via friends, books, cartoons, etc.) so be it. she’s enjoying the legend for now, and also holds a broad perspective that includes earth-based spirituality and honors other spiritual paths. she knows that christmas isn’t about materialism, yet she is a three year old who wants new toys.

anyway, she got to work dreaming up the things she wants for christmas. she asked me to help her spell the items, as she got to work writing her christmas letter.

it reads: “dear santa. i wish for: teddy bear, bike, fox, ipod, train, train track. love, N”

N wanted me to help her mail this to the north pole. now i think this is the cutest letter ever, so just couldn’t bring myself to fold it and put it into any old envelope, so we spent the afternoon creating a large envelope that would hold it out of a large roll of drawing paper and clear packaging tape (to seal the sides of the pocket.) N addressed and stamped (with a 1 cent stamp) the envelope.

N decorated the envelope with all sorts of stickers for santa. (we don’t have any holiday or winter stickers yet, so she just used random ones we did have on hand.)

we put it out beside the mailbox. (to promptly be retrieved by me when she is absorbed in play again.)

grandma is in town and brought with her a really cool coloring set for N… metallic markers on black backgrounds with who else? the disney fairies!

nevermind that blank rectangle at the bottom where N already took the markers off.

i’m so not getting paid to endorse a product here, but i’ve always been a sucker for making art on black backgrounds, so that’s the gist of this post.

N said it was magical. something about having colors show up against a dark background is like drawing with light in a nighttime sky. she completed both images that came in this disney fairies shimmer art package.

we went out to lunch later in the day, and i thought to bring along these metallic markers from the set, along with an art journal i have with blank black pages in it. (by the way, you can get the sharpie metallic markers at target and they create the same effect.)

i drew a circle on the page and invited her to create a mandala. she LOVED this directive and really got into it.

mandala artists converse

creating this masterpiece…

for some more on creating mandalas on black paper, check out our blog from last year by clicking here.

sure, N draws people every single day. she also draws things she sees, but for some reason, she has yet to have a model sit for her and draw the person she sees, until now.

life drawing class in our kitchen

my mom (who N calls “gwee”) has been in town visiting. gwee offered to sit for her portrait to be drawn the other day while i was making dinner for the family.

N had a great time, and would not let the model see her picture until it was finished. (but mommy was allowed to see it and take pictures! yay!)  she drew the face and added realistic parts that i’ve not seen her do before when she draws from her imagination… like eyelids.

she decided to add a body and dress from her imagination. she wanted to color it with a “rainbow theme.” N said the one green eye (realistic) and one magenta eye (not realistic) were to keep it with her rainbow theme.

my mom said she’d take the portrait home and frame it for her house.

N is so honored!

as of late, N’s days and evenings are filled with line drawings. she has found her “favorite pencil” (just a regular old yellow #2 pencil) and it’s pretty much her go-to art material these days.

in september, she began to crank out an impressive volume of line drawing, usually totaling 5-15 per day. she draws them at her “art desk” in the kitchen, usually while i am preparing meals. as she draws, she narrates what is happening in the picture, she does voices for the characters in the picture, and she describes each image to me in detail afterwards. this has almost replaced her magna-doodle habit.

the papers were stacking up on her desk, my desk, the dining room table, the kitchen counter… i put the date on the back bottom right corner of each one because each is just such a gem — way too precious not to keep and cherish forever. but how?!

"this cat is an artist all day & all night"

many of you have written to me asking how to store your child’s art. we display N’s art around our house in a gallery format in her bedroom and in frames around our house. we also create cards, giftwrap, and gifts out of N’s art. the rest we do store. i keep much of it in a large portfolio (read: two pieces of posterboard taped together on 3 sides) in the playroom closet. but these drawings were just coming too fast and too brilliantly to do that. so i got a cute binder at target and a 3-hole punch and created a drawing book in which to store these masterpieces chronologically.

my intention was that all of N’s drawings for the remainder of 2010 would go in here. you can see that by the title i put on the spine.

however, this book — the stack you see here in the photo below — is the product of just 22 days of drawing! (and my own sketchbook project‘s book has 3 little pages done. i think i should commission my little artist-in-residence to help me with that!)

a serious body of work for 3 weeks time!

most of them are with her trusty pencil, but a few get colored in.

cinderella & the prince

N makes all sorts of other art during the day, but no matter what, she cranks out the line drawings. she says she’s “writing a movie.” i think she’s well on her way to illustrating a cartoon, a flip book, or a children’s novel at the very least. i think i’m going to get her a spiral sketchbook next. have any of you tried that with your 3-year-olds?

how do you archive your child’s art? do you keep it all? aaaand, how do you get your kid to draw on the backs of the pages? (as green as we try to be and as much as N respects trees, loves using cloth napkins, etc., she cannot bring herself to draw on the back of her pages. suggestions?)

so, i let my 3 year old use a sharpie today. yeah, i know they’re not for kids, but she is a drawing FIEND and loves to draw with a regular pencil because she enjoys the black and white contrast. i figured i could show her how to use one of my new retractable ultra-fine point sharpie markers, and she LOVED it. she drew and drew.

my personal favorite media combo to use is sharpie and watercolors, so i put out the paints, and let her paint on her drawings. ah, markers that aren’t water-based don’t run. the joy!

yellow raincoats

true to form, N cranked out some greeting (mostly birthday) cards. (her middle name should have been hallmark. seriously. does the fact that she makes every card that goes out of our house and most of the gifts qualify as child labor?)

for my mom's ("gwee") birthday

i just love these!

she did some other non-card sharpie drawing, too. welcome to my favorite media, little one.