fleeting forms
i recently posted a poll on the paintcutpaste.com facebook fan page (hello sweet fans! thank you for your support!!!) about what your child’s favorite art material is. my comment was that novi’s favs are watercolors and crayons. what was i thinking?! most of the art done in my house is so very temporary… it’s on the MAGNA-DOODLE
sun, person, flowers (36 months)
she adores this thing – has ever since she was about 18 months old, i recall. she has worn out the pens on at least three of them so far. by that, i mean that she draws so much with it that the coating comes off the tip of the pen and it starts to scratch the drawing surface.
"just a guy" (32 months)
i find that documenting and keeping record of novi’s magna-doodle art has allowed me to really see her chronological artistic development. because it is the simplest graphic medium – black lines on a grayish-white surface – i am able to really pay attention to how her lines and forms progress without a whole lot of variables. we leave novi’s out on the coffee table at all times in our house, and often that’s where she can be found. sure, the art is meant to change and move and grow and be erased and redrawn, but i encourage parents and caregivers out there to maybe take photos every week or every month over time to really witness the beauty of your child’s visual language unfolding over time. so fascinating!
some of the first people she drew (31 months)
a person, 5 weeks later (32.5 months)
a person with features, holding flower, duck, sun, cloud, groundline, and text; 3.5 months later (36 months)
i also enjoy how novi tells stories while drawing on the magna-doodle. it is fun to sit and listen to her creative process unfold, as she is still young enough that her internal dialog is expressed verbally. (oh how i’ll miss hearing that as she grows older!) some of the fun magna-doodle stories have been:
"this astronaut is flying with the birds!" (33 months)
"the mommy sun is feeding pomegranates to her baby suns" (32 months)
my personal fav: the day the "balloon boy" story broke, we told novi about it and this was her depiction of what happened (32 months)
another fun piece of magna-doodling is how novi is using it to practice writing her letters alllll the time. she makes up words quite a bit by stringing letters together on the screen and asking me what she spelled.
left: mirror - right: magna-doodle. odd. (33 months)
kinda like vitamin? (36 months)
the amazing graduate school i attended to study transpersonal art therapy, naropa university, was buddhist-oriented. i consider myself somewhat buddhish; however, one of the many areas where i fall short of the whole buddhist philosophy is how to handle the transient nature of a magna-doodle image. i just can’t let go of these masterpieces that novi creates. thus the obsessive photographing of this little fischer price toy, and entire web photo albums dedicated to her magna-doodle pieces on our private family site. i even added some to my i only have the account so i can see others’ photos flickr page, click here if you want to see more, though i realize this is a photo-heavy entry already. (they’re just too fun!)
happy doodling!
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We love our magnadoodles too-especially the small ones! It’s great in the car, the Dr. office, shopping cart- they go about anywhere! Personally I loved my etch a sketch-wait, does that show my age?
we totally love the small magnadoodles and the aquadoodle mat at home and aquadoodle travel sized one for the car… but refilling the water-pen on that one is sometimes a pain (when the request comes while driving, especially.) etch a sketch rocks — and is still around! i loved it as a kid, too, and i hope to get one for novi when she gets a bit older.