paint cut paste

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)

novi 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. novi 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.)

novi 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.

eventually her spirographing became a drawing session, primarily done with a green marker.

but we had a great time making these lovely geometric mandalas together while it lasted…

novi got her art on today…

to wish you all…

a happy mother’s day weekend!

thank you for everything that you do.

mommas, grandmothers, aunts, godmothers, and all of the special women who make up your tribe…

enjoy your weekend!

this is just a little peek at what i did on sunday… it’s a rare mom’s art entry, as i usually only post what my little one is up to in her creative world in order to inspire other little ones out there. but today was a perfect, rainy sunday and mommy got her art on while daddy spent some quality time with novi (coincidentally, at a bird sanctuary, though the birds there were taking cover from the rain. oh well.)

here’s what i did today:

drawing at the dining room table after breakfast

pencil sketch on my beloved 140 lb arches hot press

inked & inspiration

a small color study

big birds in process

in living color

finished, pre-frame

ikea-framed and hung above our (unmade... oops!) bed

all in a glorious sunday… i don’t think i’ve accomplished any of my own creative projects start to framed finish in one day since novi’s birth. these little birds have been wanting to hatch for a looong while now, so i consider this day a milestone for mommy!

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 novi’s custom “little bear” set that we adore.

little bear picnic

making new friends.

happy spring equinox to you and yours!

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!

the other day i decided to bust out the pastels on novi… oil pastels and chalk pastels, both. just because they are called pastels, doesn’t mean they’re always pale and muted — these art materials make vibrant marks!

if you’re not familiar, oil pastels glide across a page much like a really slick, smooth crayon might. (kind of like novi’s creamy crayons, which we love, but they’re more narrow. kind of the diameter of a crayon.) they smear and blend together really nicely, unlike crayons.

chalk pastels are like a higher quality chalkboard chalk… they have a finer dust particle that makes a total mess for really pretty smudges when blending. so we just spent the morning playing around with these new materials, which are usually reserved for mommy, so that made it exciting for the little one.

oil pastel image of a person & duck (labeled!)

novi made a few cool pictures with each medium. with the chalk pastels, we practiced smudging and blending colors with our fingers. some kids (uh, and adults, including me) may not enjoy the dry, dusty feeling of the chalks, or may become frustrated by the way their picture changes, smears, and becomes littered with fingerprints while working. other kids (and adults) really delight in this sort of mutable material. chalk pastels are great to use for learning how to mix primary colors together to make secondary colors.

flower study in chalk pastels

i brought the chalk pastel piece outside (without her) to spray it with a fixative spray (see link at the bottom of this blog for product info.) if you make art with the chalks, it will continue to smear and smudge unless you use some sort of fixative on it, but be sure to spray it where there’s good ventilation and away from tiny lungs.