paint cut paste

when following N’s lead and interests, it is so obvious that she is a drawing machine… and not only does she love to draw, but her drawings are all about storytelling. she creates stories as she draws and tells them to herself and to me.

one of the art therapy techniques i have used with clients (of all ages) came to mind the other day when watching N engage me in her drawing — it’s called dialog drawing (or dialogue drawing for my friends in the uk ) the idea is that two people will have a visual conversation by taking turns drawing on one page. this can be done by one person making a mark (a line, dot, curve,) then another making a mark, and so on back and forth until a picture develops. little ones don’t always have the patience for the slow unfolding of mark-making, so it’s a good idea to take turns making one “thing” at a time. you can say, “okay, let’s take turns! you draw something on the page. then it’ll be my turn to draw something on the page, then your turn. we’ll take turns going back and forth until we feel like our picture is finished.”

today we got out a large sheet of drawing paper – i’d recommend at least a 17×20 white page for this exercise. working large is great when two (or more – get all of your kids involved!) people are using it as their canvas. we used crayons, primarily, but i made colored pencils available. markers or any other dry media would work.

we began by setting some ground rules. make up your own. if you know your kid gets upset when someone’s marks touch or add to his/her work, then make a rule that the marks can’t touch each other… our rules were loose. they were just that she’d draw one object, then i’d draw one object, etc. you can create a rule of “no talking” so that it’s a strict visual conversation, but we chatted when we made ours. our first picture began with N drawing a self-image and a ball (which i later colored in.) on my first turn, i drew myself playing ball with her. it is important to remember to use your child’s artistic “handwriting” or visual language when doing this, so as to meet them where they are and non-verbally communicate that they are being seen and witnessed. more on these ideas here.

you can see how our first images of ourselves and a ball started an entire scene

not only is this a good exercise in patience and turn-taking, but it also helps to develop visual language, and it really allows you to give your child your very focused attention, playing an art game where the content is always fresh and new.

N LOVED making the dialog drawing together! after our first scene, which ended up being a beach picture, she said, “let’s do another one! but this one can’t be on a beach! now, you go first!”

drawing 1: the beach scene

so we did another…

drawing 2: the park scene

we spent over an hour doing these pictures and creating a story and talking with each other about it.

i loved watching how our ideas bounced off of one another. sometimes mine came first…

…sometimes hers did.

it was a really fun and connected morning art activity for us – try it!

N is a big fan of balloons (like most earthlings) so we blew up a few little ones the other day to play.

leave the balloon blowing to the grown-ups

i remembered i had seen a cool post on ordinary life magic back in the spring involving balloons, yarn, glue, and water. i just love projects that involve the stuff i already have in the house. i thought it’d be fun to try this project outside the other day with our balloons. easy enough, right? well, read on…

if you look at the ordinary life magic post, you’ll see these lovely “yarn eggs” that the hardened-by-glue yarn left behind after the balloons popped. i was excited to end up with some of these skeletal orbs, and had some cool ideas for what we might do with them. so we got started… first, dip a 3 foot long (or so) strand of yarn into a mixture of craft glue and water. during the process, we made several mixtures of the craft glue (i used both elmer’s glue-all and aleen’s original tacky glue intermittently to use up the last of two bottles i had laying around the art room.)

then just begin to wrap the wet, sticky yarn around a partially blown up balloon.

after the balloons were all wrapped in lovely yarn scraps, we hung them in the playhouse to drip dry overnight. (if you’re doing this inside or over a floor you care about, be sure to put a towel down or do it over the bathtub.)

the next day we checked on the balloons, and attempted the next step… pop balloon and peel it away from the yarn. cool, i came prepared with a thumbtack. it was a snap, pop, then crackle moment. as the balloon deflated, it crackled as it took the yarn with it, imploding slowly. no pretty yarn orb.

deflated.

i tried peeling the balloon away from the yarn, but it was harder to do on some balloons than others. perhaps the ones with a thicker glue mixture were more stubborn? here are the sad results we got.

so i wrote to stephanie over at ordinary life magic and asked how she got the lovely results she got in an effort to learn where we might have gone wrong. here was her answer: “ours did that, too – some more than others. i just poked my fingers through the egg, and reshaped the ones that had deflated. you could probably use a spoon or something if you wanted to. they’ll stay if they sag and you reshape them, and then as they dry over days they’ll keep the reshaping.” good tips, though i think it was a little late for our yarn tangles, honestly.

we’ll try again another time, but i always like to post these art-gone-wrong experiences so you all can see our trials and errors. it’s also a nice example of the idea that in art, products are often unpredictable, so it’s all about the process! sometimes the materials dictate what they want to become, and we have the opportunity here to honor that and curb our attachment to results. we can model this for little ones who either can become frustrated and disappointed when art doesn’t turn out how they imagined OR were honestly not as goal-oriented as we were from the beginning, and probably just had fun playing with balloons and sticky goop. for me, the most satisfying part of this was indeed the process…  seeing our balloons all lined up outside on the line to dry was just lovely…

and seeing my little one’s mind excitedly expand to include the idea of using balloons for art materials was priceless!

jean van’t hul, the writer of one of my most favorite artsy blogs, the artful parent, interviewed little ol’ me! i am so honored to be featured on her blog, and for the opportunity to discuss art making from my perspective as an art therapist.

check out the interview here, and be sure to leave a comment just under the interview on the artful parent, before midnight EST june 4th to be entered for a chance to win a set of 3 nesting orb kits made by yours truly.

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…

so, your kid made some art. now what? as most of us caregivers know, there’s the clean-up and the figuring out clever ways to display and/or store the art. true. in my pre-mommy role as an art therapist (to which i plan to return once kindergarten allows me the time,) i learned that the art-making part is just one part of the creative process. of course there is contemplation of what to make, preparing for what to make, making it, and then there is also another very important step in the creative process, which is unfolding meaning from the image. this is a HUGE topic in the art therapy world with a scope that’s way too broad and sometimes esoteric for a blog like this one, so i will try to extract and provide here just a few useful suggestions that parents, teachers, or caregivers of little ones can use when engaging in art with our small friends. i should note that these tips are most applicable to art-making that comes out of free play or free drawing/sculpting time… not so much the highly directive crafting projects.

influential art therapist, janie rhyne, once said that form leads to content, which is to say that the images that any artist (aka: your child) makes contain the stories, emotions, intellect, and world view of the artist. don’t miss out on the rich opportunity to engage in uncovering the gems embedded in the lines, shapes, and colors that come forth from your child’s imagination. not only will you learn something, but this step in the process often makes the unconscious conscious for the artist — or to speak plainly, it can help your child’s idea to come full-circle and be integrated into his or her everyday life.

here are some respectful ways to approach talking about your child’s art-making and art product:

during art-making, be an active observer by assisting as a “third hand” when the artist might need help. for example, using scissors to cut something a child may be unable to cut or getting a fresh glass of water to rinse used paintbrushes, etc. also, while your child engages in the art-making process, you can support this by reflecting back only what you see. you can reflect verbally (“i see yellow lines across the top of your page”), non-verbally (mirroring the child’s affect or posture) or graphically (making art alongside the child copying the child’s artistic “handwriting” -so to speak- as a way to communicate: “i am paying attention to you.”)

once the art product is complete, approach the image with a humble curiosity, never assuming that you know more than the artist knows about what it is or what it means. i often describe the respectful way of talking about art to be the opposite of a dream-decoder book. you know, the books that say “if you dreamt of a pig, you are greedy or stubborn.” nonsense. art symbols, just like dream symbols, are unique to the artist. for one kid, a pig might be the scary boar he saw at a state fair. for another kid, a pig could mean the sweet, soft, cuddly friend he hugs when he goes to sleep at night. (sure, there are symbols that arise that reflect the collective unconscious, etc etc, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)

"this guy is sad because mommy said he can't drive the car" (car in brown, upper left)

to keep this objective attitude, you can try to visualize the art object as a separate entity that has entered the room, and engage in conversation with your child about it. for example, ask your child the simple question, “what do you see?” to begin. trust the artist’s words about their own art. if you have a younger child who may not have the ability to describe the art, you can plainly tell about what you see. be careful not to interpret what the image “must be” or what it “looks like to [you]” or what it means. just describe the lines, shapes and colors that you see with your eye. by describing the image, meaning comes. (again, form leads to content.) so, now your conversation may lead into a story from the child about what s/he drew, who is in the picture, what is he doing, what is happening, what is he feeling, why is he feeling this way, etc…

another fun approach is to dialog with the art itself. kids are great at pretend and imagination, so suspend any adult self-consciousness and your disbelief and go for it with them. “if the duck that you drew could talk, what would he say to us?” (only after child has identified that her picture is, in fact, a duck.) then you, your kid, and the duck can have a full-on conversation. stay within the metaphor, behind the safe veil of play. allow the meaning to unfold organically. you don’t need to translate the play into what it must really mean in the life of the child, at least not out loud. this sort of imaginal dialog with art allows the art piece to be projected upon or acted upon by the child, which can often externalize the child’s internal world (and get out feelings s/he may be harboring.) try to curb your own inclinations to change, brighten, or smooth over content that may seem angry or violent or negative to you — art is a safe playground. art provides an opportunity for sublimation of the darker side of being human, and for a child to be able to do this through art is a sign of health. if the child seems to be looking for a way to ameliorate a darker situation in his or her own art, you can certainly follow his/her lead and provide assistance in changing and moving the story. even when helping with this, be sure to allow space for the child to exercise internal resources to arrive at his or her own unique solution and make choices.

the mean yeti

when looking at someone else’s art, always check in with your own biases and opinions. if we were acting as a child-centered art or play therapist, the rule would be not to criticize or (get ready for it) praise the art or the behavior. as a mom, it’s hard not to say, “that’s a beautiful flower you drew, sweetie!” but honestly, as supportive and nurturing as that statement is, it doesn’t provide the type of positive reinforcement that the examples above on how to talk about the art can give to your child.

above all, be authentic. be yourself. art making and art talk shouldn’t take you outside of your role as mommy (or daddy, teacher, grandma, babysitter, or whoever you may be to the child.) your child depends on your voice, your context, and your consistency. coloring with your kid at home every day isn’t art therapy, so there are no hard and fast rules. these are merely suggestions for ways you and your child might get more out of making art together, and suggestions for what to do when the art is complete and how to learn from it. if you want more info on art therapy or recommended reading along these lines, you can check out my professional web site’s art therapy page or feel free to contact me with questions.

being witnessed and feeling seen are huge confidence-builders for any human being, especially our little friends who are forming their sense of self in relationship to the world. the art process allows cargivers a really concrete way to give children the affirmation they need.

"mommy, i drew a jellyfish!!!"

we are feeling springy over here this week… the trees are already pink and white with blossoms and it’s been in the mid to upper 60s this week. yesterday N and i went for a long afternoon walk around our neighborhood, looking for treasures and for signs of spring.

we meandered through streets, ducked through bushes, gazed up at trees… we collected all sorts of nature’s gifts, like leaves, sticks, berries, acorns, seeds, flowers… the sweet friends the earth has put in our new california neighborhood. we are still acclimating to our new digs, and feeling our way through the scenery out here. the specimens we gathered were like evidence of our move; like clues to our new surroundings. we studied them.

getting personal with a palm tree

when the sun was setting and we made our way home, i remembered a cool project i’d just seen in a very cool book N got for her birthday last month called nature’s art box. (i also recognized it from the artful parent blog as well.) the project was about making a clay fossil to preserve the textures and shapes of natural objects in sculpey.

bag of goodies

when we got home, we looked over each treasure while putting it into a bowl on our table. we talked about what it was and where we found it.

then, i busted out our trusty box of sculpey, and we went to work making and squishing little balls of the polymer clay.

then we pressed some of the objects into the clay to make textured discs. like little thumbprints from mother nature.

granted, scupley is not my most favorite clay to use with kids, as it can be toxic while baking. so, i made sure to do that part after N was asleep on the other end of the house with kitchen windows open and her door closed. (next time, i may try my trusty model magic and see if that works…)

after the discs were baked, i put them onto a pretty plate that we often keep on our nature table or altar.

i wrote with a brown sharpie on the backs of them what the object was, the city, and the date. N is enjoying examining them and guessing what made the print. they’re a good size for her to carry around and be proud of, too. it’d be nice to poke a hole in the top of some (or all) of the discs with a straw before baking to make pendants or ornaments out of them, too. i enjoy the white of them, but they may also be nice if painted (a light watercolor wash, perhaps) or glazed.

i loved doing this activity – mostly the walking, talking, and paying attention to so many intimate details. seeing the world through N’s big, new eyes always keeps things fresh for me. i’d love to repeat this activity in different places, like on a beach vacation, almost like a 3-d photo album from a trip, without the photos.

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 N’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 N’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 N’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 N 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 N about it and this was her depiction of what happened (32 months)

another fun piece of magna-doodling is how N 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.

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 N 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.

happy doodling!