paint cut paste

we’ve been having a lot of BIG fun over here…

often in our house, we hear novi calling from the den, “mommy, will you trace my hand on the magnadoodle?” so i oblige, and she decorates her hand.

yesterday morning, a light went off for me – body tracing! body tracing is a wonderful body awareness intervention in the art therapy world – how perfect for a toddler. novi loves to draw people’s faces and bodies and learn about what parts go where. this is right up her alley – making a life-sized self image! so we got down to business. i rolled out some light brown kraft paper that i had around (any roll of large paper would work – like the rolls you put on your kid’s easel or solid wrapping paper, etc.) then novi layed down on it, oh-so-giddy about the prospect.

i traced her outline with a black crayon (so as not to mark up her cute peacock pajamas.) she giggled when i traced her ticklish feet! then we got out our creamy crayons to decorate it (markers or crayons would have been fine, too, but she chose to use the creamy ones because “they show up brighter”)

she tried to make it in her likeness with blonde hair, blue eyes, a pink mouth.

she chose the outfit the “big novi” would wear and decorated it, down to the flower on the shirt, green crocs, and a silver bracelet.

when it was finished, she had a laughter fit about how her new novi friend was her twin…

then novi instructed me to cut out the image so she could put it on her wall. we taped it (with blue painter’s tape) to her bathroom door. (i could totally see these lining the halls of a preschool or elementary school…)

now she laughs at it every time she heads to the bathroom. such a fun activity that teaches little ones who are just learning about drawing people how to place all of the parts onto a figure, and a great confidence booster in celebrating and decorating their own body’s shape and size!

as an art therapist, one of my favorite art interventions to use with clients is the scribble drawing. two prominent art therapists (winnecott and cane) independently came up with this technique which uses a self-made scribble as a visual starter for an image.

a scribble drawing i made as an example for novi

usually the scribble is made on a large sheet of paper, and sometimes with the artist’s eyes closed. novi was way into this idea when i first told her about it, so she grabbed a crayon and went to it.

after your little one makes a scribble, encourage them to look at the scribble to see if they recognize any image in it. turn the paper to all four sides, and ask “what do you see?” when i asked novi about this brown one, she said, “hmmm, what do i see? this is almost like making shapes out of the clouds!!!” it totally is. exactly.  sometimes there may be a concrete, representational figure that emerges for the child. or sometimes it might be an imaginal story that comes about, which can also be fun. novi saw her first brown scribble and said, “there’s a snail in there!” because we already had the watercolor paints out, she wanted to paint in the image she saw. (it’s fine to just color it in with crayons, pencils, pastels, or whatever graphic medium you have around.)

she gave the snail a crazy name, too!

after the snail, we made several more scribble drawings…

contemplating the pink scribble

she saw a bunny in there! (i helped trace her lines with the paintbrush on this one)

hmm... what could it be?

a girl with a beach ball, of course!

the next day, i heard novi playing with her magnadoodle in the other room, saying “hmmm…. what do i see? a mouse!” a few moments later, she called me in to see the magnadoodle scribble drawing she made of “a mouse making a dress with lots of thread.” (we watched “the mouse song” from cinderella on youtube earlier that day.)

for the past few days, novi has been doing scribble drawings on her own all the time with her crayons and paper. it’s like a fun little puzzle for her to solve, and exercises the imagination.

in my art therapy practice a few years ago (before novi’s birth,) i loved using scribble drawings with adult clients who were often intimidated to begin making art, stating the fear: “i can’t draw.” it’s a great way for any child or adult to warm up to art, and this activity uses the imagination and taps into the unconscious mind in finding and developing a picture from the scribble initially produced.

what a useful and fun art activity! scribble away!

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rub a dub dub, art in the tub! sure, it’s fun to be messy with art… and it’s also fun to make art while you get clean!

they make this cool bath crayon set with a cute ducky sponge just for this very thing – drawing in the tub! tonight when i busted out this surprise crayon set for novi, she was astonished. “what? you mean i can draw in my bathtub????!!!!? like, even on the wall?!?!” after explaining that it is ONLY with these crayons, and ONLY on the bath tub, my little artist went to work!

give the girl a crayon, she’ll tag something. seriously, her name is everywhere! sweetly, she likes to also write “mom”

and she drew a cute little yellow ducky in a blue pond, too…

but i think her favorite part was the yellow sponge duck who was her “artist’s assistant” and helped her clean all of her marks off the walls.

(thank you, ducky.)