paint cut paste

summer officially begins today, the summer solstice. what better way to ring in the season than to brainstorm with your little one(s) about all of the fun things you can do together in these beautiful, expansive months ahead?

when i saw this idea for summer fun cards on teach mama, i knew that N would be really into it. she used index cards, but i thought i’d check our stash of scrap papers to make these. then i realized i had a pack of blank index cards in our stash already, so it was kismet. white cardstock is good for illustrating, though you could do this with any papers you have around (think: brown paper grocery bags, used gift wrap, etc.)

N and i thought of all of the fun summery things we’d like to do together when the weather is warm and the days are long and there’s no preschool in session. i wrote these things on the cards in marker. then i passed them to N to illustrate any way she’d like, with some dry media: markers, crayons, and colored pencils.

here are a few of the finished ones that N drew. i drew on a few of the cards (not pictured below), as well… we had TONS! N loved learning about what illustration means by doing this project.

then i used a hole punch to make holes in the cards, and we strung our cards on colorful yarn. we hung them in N’s playroom….

…where we can be reminded of all of the potential…

that these long summer days hold.

happy summer! have a blessed solstice!

we’ve been having fun preparing for father’s day over here…N made some papa portrait cards for her dad and grandfathers.

here are her portraits. (yep, she essentially has 4 grandfathers. modern families.)

we also turned a really cool magnadoodle image of hers…

(child's name covered for privacy)

into a great travel coffee mug for her dad on cafepress.com! (i love this idea of using your child’s art on everyday products. sure beats logos and advertising for other companies!)

(child's name covered for privacy)

N painted a wooden picture frame for her dad at preschool a couple of weeks ago, complete with a photo taken by her teacher.

we added the frame and the mug to a gift basket with lots of his favorite goodies.

one of N’s traditions is to make mom’s day and dad’s day signs… last year in 2009, her sign looked like this:

but this year, she was able to write and illustrate her own sign – hooray!

happy father’s day to all the dads, granddads, godfathers, uncles, and all of the amazing men who love & support our children!

this one began as a simple request by my little artist in residence: “last night i was thinking about drawing a ballerina using white and peach crayons, but those colors never show up!” so i suggested that we get out different colors of paper and she could draw with any and all of the drawing tools she has.

i brought out many colors and sizes of paper i have stashed. some construction paper, some were those little packs of card stock scraps you can buy cheaply. i put her crayons, colored pencils, and oil pastels out on the table.

then she got to draw the ballerina she had imagined… and said, ”you know, if i think hard enough, i can see what i want to draw in the air before i draw it.”

another dancer came after that (which she said is an image of herself)

then she changed themes and drew a very cool picture on black paper that she titled, “night surfing”

and made an image of a chocolate ice cream cone as a gift for our friends.

so as simple as this blog entry is, it is merely a reminder that it’s fun to switch it up sometimes and bust out all sorts of papers to draw on… it inspires kids’ imaginations in different ways and new images arise. try it out and see what emerges…

one of my favorite activities as a child was the spirograph. luckily, they still make these things! (only ours is called mystery spin doodle.)

mandalas, which we’ve done a post about before, are a symbol of wholeness, and as an art therapist, i’ve come to adore them and their healing properties. a spirograph produces a circular image that is much like a yantra, which is the hindu form of a mandala (mandala is traditionally a buddhist term) that is comprised of intricate geometric patterns.

(this one was done by momma)

N had i had some fun this morning trying out the spirograph with different materials. first, she tried it with colored pencils. they need to be very sharp in order to fit through the small holes in the gears. we broke a lot of pencil tips, actually…

i like the pastel look of her pencil one.

so we switched to the 3 markers that came with the kit (that have narrow and long ink tips to fit through the holes.) we were able to add in a few of the markers we had, but not many fit through the holes. N made a couple more mandalas with markers. the smaller gears are easier for little hands to coordinate with keeping it against the edges. i had to help her hand guide the larger gears (which are the ones that produce the images closer to the center.)

N loved the purple one and had the urge to draw a guy in the middle of it right after she began it.

this is what happens after the gears come off… lots of marker scribbling, but it still looks so cool contained within the circle.

we had a great time making these lovely geometric mandalas together…

sometimes we’ve just gotta have free art time… without limits on materials, without “how-to’s,” without specified products. i love these moments when N just asks for watercolors or markers or colored pencils and goes for it. we’ve been doing a lot of really open, unstructured art time in our home these past coupla weeks. it’s good for the soul. we just stuck to the basics and watched the creativity floooow…

in my art therapy training, we talked about a theorist named mihaly csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-sent-me-high”) who coined an idea called “flow theory.” flow is his term for the emotional state opposite frustration. flow is when you are fully, happily absorbed in an activity, completely satisfied, but not taking on more than you can handle. it is often what happens when an artist becomes absorbed in their work, and notions of time and space fall away. i relish in this creative space, and kids organically go there in their imaginal creative play. when observing a child in this state, you can usually hear all sorts of made-up stories, characters, ideas, plots spewing out – like a peek into the unconscious, coming out without a filter. such an honor to witness.

while “in the flow,” N has made plenty of tiny paintings that have become and will become cards for friends and family…

N has also worked on some larger watercolor masterpieces that now adorn her art gallery wall…

"duck eating grass" & "N in a beret, about to climb a ladder"

by my nature, i’m more at home with the expressive arts than i am with the crafting. imagination plus pigment yields limitless expression!  so let it flow, let it flow, let it floooow…

sometimes the most beautiful, artful times are spontaneous. unplanned. open. the weather here this week has been sunny and in the 70s. we have been enjoying some time outside in the yard.

just bringing a basket outside of simple art materials (colored pencils and paper… easy.)

egg in the nest

simple leaf rubbing

add a few beautiful wooden toys from mamakopp. these are part of N’s custom “little bear” set that we adore.

little bear picnic

making new friends.

happy spring equinox to you and yours!

there are many days when N sits down to color and picks up a white crayon or colored pencil and applies it to the white paper she’s using, and says with disappointment, “this white one doesn’t work.” this was the impetus for doing this activity with her… i wanted to show her just how and where her white (and for that matter, the underutilized silver and yellow) art materials would shine beautifully!

as an art therapist, mandalas are such a huge part of my artistic language. in my graduate studies, i learned quite a bit about mandalas. the word is pronounced maahn-dah-la. simply put, mandalas are just drawings within a circle; however they have such huge symbolic significance, and i think wikipedia gives a pretty nice summary of their history. mandalas can be created in any size or medium, and by any person. i find them to be pretty wonderful to use as a springboard for artists of any age who perhaps don’t know “what to draw?!” because the circle provides a safe container and a frame for the lines, shapes, and colors to happen within.

weekly mandalas i drew in my last semester of grad school, 2005

carl jung saw mandalas as a representation of the unconscious self… (not like when you get a concussion, but more like your subconscious mind.) in malchiodi’s book handbook of art therapy, there is a chapter on medical art therapy with children (by councill) describing how biofeedback shows that drawing within a circle produces a physiologically measurable relaxation response. and what momma doesn’t want a little chill time for her toddler?

one of my favorite books on these artsy circles is by the mandala queen, judith cornell, and it’s called mandala: luminous symbols for healing. she provides a series of meditations followed by mandala art activities, many of which involve drawing with a white colored pencil on black paper. her reasoning for these materials is that they create the illusion that light is emanating from the paper, reflecting the artist’s own “inner light.”

i am wise enough to know that even just by virtue of her age, my 34 month old daughter is more connected to her “inner light” than many adults, as she is closer to “the source” (her birth, connection to spirit, not yet socialized, etc.) than we are. i also know she perpetually has ants in her pants, so i skipped the super-awesome visualization/meditation exercises (intended for adults) that cornell offers in her book, and just gave N a piece of black paper on which i drew a circle (you can just trace a plate.) i gave her a white colored pencil (and she had access to all of the other colors and crayons, too.) i told her that her pencil was a wand of light that could make lines and stars and shapes in the nighttime sky (the paper.) then she took off with her magic wands…

circles within circles

i was flipping through the book as she drew, and saw cornell’s exercise on tracing hands inside of the mandala (on page 38) to get in touch with one’s own healing potential. N, such a natural healer , asks me to trace her hands a few times per week (often on the magnadoodle) so i asked if she wanted me to put her hands inside of her mandala. she was excited about the idea, and patiently let me trace.

N's final image

N’s mandala is much like the ones done by the group shown in cornell’s book, and is undoubtedly a glimpse into her psyche in the moment  she created the piece, as are all pieces of art made by any person. but this blog isn’t the place for me to interpret/expose my daughter’s inner-workings… i am offering this as a fun, relaxing, and deepening exercise to do with your little one. and if nothing else, it gets you to think about using various colors of drawing papers and puts those often-ignored white pencils to work!

cornell's book & N's image