paint cut paste

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.)

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!

on a recent trip to colorado to visit my dear fellow art therapist friends, they reminded me of a fun little activity that i used to do when i was a little girl – scratch drawings! as a kid, i loved the magic of revealing a rainbow under a dark, black veil. i thought N might appreciate this, too.

i thought i remembered painting thick paper with watercolor, coloring over it with thick black crayon, and scratching… but perhaps not. my art therapist friend (and momma) was doing this with her 3 year old and reminded me that you can color with crayons or pastels, and then put a thick coat of acrylic paint over the whole page to scratch through. so we gathered our materials (thick paper, crayons, acrylic black paint) and began…

N and i both covered a page with patches of tons of colors… i got a blister from doing this!

then we painted over the entire lovely page with black acrylic paint.

we let it dry overnight. once it was dry, we got out a few scratching tools – a wooden skewer, a paperclip, a tack, and a nail. not all of them were cool for young kids, but N seemed to do well and was careful with all of them. whew!

N drawing with a nail. (bad mommy?)

we scratched and scratched to reveal fun pictures… “nighttime scenes!” as N excited called them.

you know me and cutting things out and putting them on colorful papers as borders. (yeah, i did that again. maybe for cards?)

i’m honestly not sure why N and i have not made many collages before… but we finally did! we gathered up a few magazines, scissors, glue, and a scrap piece of black posterboard i had laying around and got started.

N and i flipped through magazines and she told me the pictures she wanted me to cut out. while she is now able to use scissors, her skills aren’t at the level where she would successfully cut out an image she really wanted. so this time, i was a third hand for her.

N was superhappy to squirt glue onto the backs of the images.

she thought about where she wanted each one placed, and took her time. i was somewhat surprised by the care she took with this.

after the pictures were applied, she wanted to draw on the black paper with crayons, so she created a story involving the pictures and her drawing, and told it as she drew.

when she was finished, she was quite proud!

for my adult art therapy clients, i often have a box of pre-cut collage images from which they can choose pictures that resonate for them without our taking up our sessions hunting through magazines. i may do the same for N when i get a spare moment, by cutting out lots of images for her to have at home for this purpose.

a handfull of my friends have little ones who have recently celebrated their first birthday. along with new experiences of toddling around and mastering some words, they are also ready to begin some early art-making experiences. a few moms have asked me what i first did with N in that realm. this sent me back through my memory and my zillions of photos of my wee little teeny N-bear.

playroom 12.5 months

generally, the very first art materials are those that we refer to as “pre-art materials.” this basically means they are safe items that can either be digested (such as beans, whipped cream, or dough) or that are large (such as building blocks, balls, bowls). they promote tactile experiences and are used for sensory-motor stimulus, and are great for kids between one and two years of age. pre-art materials are still useful beyond the two-year-old mark because they reinforce the sensory experiences that a child is discovering, and since children at this stage can become easily frustrated, pre-art materials may provide them with a sense of mastery over the art task.

N was a kid who, at around 9 or 10 months old, loved to hold the stems of two leaves in her hands everywhere we went. then two drumsticks from her toy drums. which evolved into two fat crayons, one in each hand, with which to make her first marks. often, two or three crayons were in each hand, making marks together.

15 months

she loved the cause and effect of being able to create a mark… to make something on the page! how powerful that must feel for the first time, for a brand new being to assert herself and push pigment across paper and watch what happens! she was sold.

15 months

as you can see in the photo above, we have always loved taping off the borders of the page — not only does it keep the paper from wobbling all over the place for early artists, but it also creates a lovely frame around abstract scribbles.

14 month scribbles by N (bottom pastel rainbow by me)

we ventured into the realm of homemade dough as we got closer to 18 months old. mostly she just loved to mush it around, pull it apart, squish it, feel it, poke it with straws. she would command certain things for me to make for her like balls, snowmen, various animals, and then manipulate them, while cracking up, after i created them.

playing with dough at 20 months old

and always, sandtrays, water tables, and natural materials found outside are great for exploration… (keep an eye on where sticks and rocks end up at this stage, of course.) have fun introducing these tiny artists to their own creative potential — it truly knows no bounds!

who knew that when N found the regular old pencil i put in her colored pencil cup, a new favorite medium would be born?

she’s been keeping it simple over here for a coupla days now… just doing basic line drawings with a pencil and some scrap paper i keep in a bin on her art desk.

while N draws, she always narrates what is going on in the picture and what the characters are saying, in different voices and such.it’s fascinating to watch.

i will share a few (of the stack that’s collecting) of her little scenes – so fun!

festival with bounce-house, daddy with cotton candy, N with balloons, and mommy with her camera (what else would i have?)

walrus jumping rope while a bird brings her (easter) eggs to a nest

N feeding our cats their dinner bowls, but the cats are mad (see wagging tail) because a yeti has caught a person in a lasso

L to R: bird with a present, ant, spider climbing tree trunk to his web, bee, butterfly, flowers

she even made a little birthday card for our cat, bean, who turned 9 on sunday… just one day before N turned 3.5 years old this past monday, the 26th – (yes, those half-birthdays are a big deal, right?)

she wrote the message and drew a picture of herself playing with bean with the laser cat toy

the other night she began to add some color to a few line drawings she did, using her crayons. i am really into this artistic development going on over here!

our cat, bean, giving iridessa (the light-talent fairy) a rainbow tube

so for this one, i’m willing to bet you’ve got all the materials you need!